


For All of My Shortcomings (Welcome to My Homecoming)

by vamm_goda



Series: The Thing About Destiny [4]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Coaches, Colorado Avalanche, F/M, Fictionalized Family Members, Fix-It, Joe Sakic knows all, Male-Female Friendship, Rare Pairings, Reconciliation, Reunion Sex, Team as Family, Women Being Awesome, Women in the NHL, institutionalized sexism, title from a song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 16:16:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2699327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vamm_goda/pseuds/vamm_goda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By May 2013 the Colorado Avalanche are out of the playoffs, out of a coach, and out of ideas. Joe Sakic pulls a few strings and makes a few calls to try and fix at least two of those things.</p>
<p>Or: Patrice Roy returns to the NHL, tries to pull her former team out of a spiral, and has unexpected feelings about her ex-husband. Really, she's just trying to do the best for everyone involved.</p>
<p>Always-a-girl AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For All of My Shortcomings (Welcome to My Homecoming)

**Author's Note:**

> Gorgeous [Mix and Cover Art](http://peace-and-snow.livejournal.com/6905.html)! Title from _Coming Home_ by Diddy and Skylar Grey.
> 
> Warnings: Misogyny, including sexist language. Hockey players (and coaches) have dirty mouths. Sexual situations.
> 
> Updated 3/4/15 with tag improvements and correcting a few lingering typos. Minor content changes.

These ol' blocks  
Is what made me, saved me, drove me crazy  
Drove me away then embraced me  
Forgave me for all of my shortcomings  
Welcome to my homecoming  
Yeah it’s been a long time coming  
Lot of fights, lot of scars

\-- Diddy, _Coming Home_

 

**May**

\\\

Patrice gets the call a day after Joe is hired, picking up the phone at dinner to hear him on the other end of the line, asking when it would be convenient for them to meet. Patrice would have to be dense to miss the significance of that; they’re friends, but not in the “I'm going to fly out to Florida just to see how you're doing” sort of way. Joe wouldn’t be making the trip so soon after hiring for anything less than a _really big deal_.

He never actually uses the words head coach, but the desire is there, under his words.

“We’re _never allowed to answer at dinner,” Callan mutters quietly when he thinks she isn’t listening. She doesn’t correct him._

After the call she finishes dinner, puts the boys to bed, and only then hops online to get an idea of what she’s up against. She’s been shamefully out of touch with the Avalanche the past few years, but in her defense she has a team of her own, a _life_ , that keeps her manically busy on even the best of days.

Her name appears in almost all the searches she pulls up that night, speculation and hope mixing equally in the blogs and cut with a lot of skepticism. After all, Patrice had interviewed with Montreal a few years ago, and everyone _knew_ great players never became great coaches.

She filed _that_ little gem in the back of her head for future reference. At least history has finally had its say and they can call her ‘great’ without adding a playground ‘. . . y’know, for a girl’ disclaimer.

Joe is the one who suggests golf, even though Patrice is the one who names the place. She’s not particularly good at being courted, and having this aspect of control is important. Golf is an easy thing, is something everyone can agree on; it’s quiet and thoughtful with a lot of walking, and there’s a reason it’s been used as a meeting tool since its invention. It’s practically built for schmoozing and bullshitting.

The ball flies straight down the fairway, a long drive that carries it well into the green. Patrice watches it, lips quirking in pleasure at the arc of it. It’s a great shot, fired off from the men’s tee box because of course it is. “So, they say that Joe Sacco is out.”

“They’re right, whoever ‘they’ is.” Joe’s waiting on Josh Kroenke’s drive, letting the club president get his shot in before continuing, but he’s still listening to her in that creepy intense way of his.

She shrugs. “That’s okay. I imagine having a Sacco an’ a Sakic to report to might’a been confusing.”

Josh keeps practicing his swing, but his attention is clearly honed in on Patrice, and Patrice’s terrible attempts at humor. “Is that funny?”

“Not really.” She shrugs, and resists the urge to re-position Josh’s hips. Time has taught her _some_ discretion, and Josh is _everyone’s_ boss. “The team tanks, a coach and management must have responsibility for that. That’s the opposite of funny.”

Joe’s always been a good guy. Too good, he probably offered Sacco a job as the stick boy rather than send him out on the streets like he deserved, but he always had the organization at heart.

Josh’s muscles tighten up across his shoulders, and the drive goes a little haywire. He curses.

Joe smiles, that sometimes infuriating smile that says he knows something Patrice doesn’t. “I thought you said you didn’t follow the team as much as you could have.”

Her polo shirt is itching at the back of her neck where the sweat is gathering. She doesn’t want to start smiling, but she does. The sight of the three of them carrying their own bags, for the privacy it offers them, strikes her as funny for a moment. It gives her playful thoughts. “You got the number one pick, an you’re not Montreal from back in the day, so it can’t be a _good_ thing.”

Joe actually cracks up at that, though Josh still looks a little bit like a very dull rooster with his feathers all up. There are winkles there that Patrice’s not used to seeing, lining Joe’s eyes and making them look sleepier, somehow.

Not that Patrice has escaped the past decade untouched. There’s grey at her temples and her hips have never _quite_ lost the baby weight, no longer the stick straight kid who could pass for a boy like she’d been when they’d played their first game together. Most of the Alumni have retired, some have died, and they’ve all gotten old: Hedgy, Drury, even _Tanguay_ , that band from the 00s. Hell, Foppa has a _kid_ , which is something Patrice never thought she’d see in her lifetime. But seeing Joe . . . that, more than anything, is what makes the whole experience seem somehow unreal.

Out of all of them, Joe had seemed ageless.

“So, how’s retirement treating you?”

The smile quickly morphs into a laugh, soft and under her breath. It sounds bitter, though she’s not sure where that’s coming from. “Is _that_ what you think I been doing?” She takes a deep breath, because it _isn’t_. Not really. She’s had time in Quebec to develop and learn; she’s in her element with the Remparts even if coaching them sometimes feels like a board game or – _heh_ – child’s play, compared to the NHL. She has a good group of kids, she has the title ‘Memorial Cup winning coach’ next to her name, she has practice and scouting and games, and sometimes she even has _time_.

Jonathan and Callan both call her ‘maman’ when she gets home at night, so there’s nothing in the world she should complain about.

“It’s slower,” she admits, when it’s clear they aren’t really sure if she answered their question or not. Judging from Joe’s face he realizes that slow does not always equal relaxing. “There are new challenges, different ones.”

“So you’re happy in Quebec?” Joe’s probing.

“I am very happy.” And that’s true, there’s nothing she _should_ complain about, but there’s plenty that drives her crazy anyway. She’s got a sweet setup, she’s got her team and her position as coach and GM, her kids are settled and it’s perfect except for the fact that it’s not the NHL. “I miss the game. You should know what I mean by that.”

Despite the pressures, the sleepless nights and broken bones, broken records and broken hearts, neither one of them could ever give it up. Hockey’s too much of a high to let go of them so easily.

She began planning her career with the Remparts before her divorce was even _final_. The alternative was something she didn’t want to consider.

It was take up with the Remparts or slowly lose her _mind_.

Joe nods slowly, eyes never leaving the green. He’d joined the front office only a few years into his supposed retirement, ostensibly because they needed him, and he needed them just as much. “I think I know exactly.”

They finish the course in another couple hours, and the talk switches to casual, discussions about the NHL, the changes since their last game together. After a while it switches to their families, their kids and of course, of _course_ , Mitchell, as Joe’s oldest, is following his father closely, learning hockey and loving every moment of it. Jonathan is a goalie, Callan’s starting towards being a forward and that’s one thing Joe starts laughing at because Patrice looks so _indignant_. Josh stays quiet for the most part, but it’s clear he’s watching them, seeing the way Joe and Patrice debate back and forth. Underneath the playfulness there’s an edge of rivalry, of testing and pushing.

Patrice and Joe are fiercely competitive, even like this.

\\\

Lunch is Josh’s concern; he’s the one who lost to them. The Bear Club doesn’t offer inexpensive as an option, but he can handle it.

Josh has his tablet out, resting on the table as he flicks through it. Patrice finds herself momentarily missing the days of file folders and big, reassuring stacks of paper, entering the office to see a small forest spread over the president’s desk. Time has forced even that aspect of the NHL to change and evolve, though Patrice finds herself distrusting the concept on principle alone.

Joe has a beer in front of him. That somehow feels safer.

Josh keeps flipping through his tablet like a kid playing a game. “As you know, we’ve had some shake ups in the front office, and we’re restructuring the organization. We’re keeping Greg Sherman on, but his role will be almost entirely ceremonial. Joe’s handling all of the personnel decisions at this point.” Josh inclines his head to Joe, who agrees silently. The Kroenkes are not hockey men, and Josh realizes this. Patrice likes him almost immediately; it takes guts to admit those deficiencies and plan for them.

“You want me to be head coach.” After years of being jerked around by the NHL, shuttled back and forth with the trophies she’d earned under one arm and nothing to show for it besides a series of quickly abandoned apartments, Patrice has become leery of long engagements.

Josh looks a little off put. “Yes, we do.”

She leans back in her seat, fingers pressed into the armrest. “I’m flattered.”

“Joe and I, we want to see the Avalanche back at the top of the standings again. We’re in this to bring the Cup back to Denver, no other reason. You were a big part of the teams that gave Colorado so much success, and Joe assures me you’re the perfect candidate. He speaks of your coaching skills highly.”

Patrice stares at Joe over her menu, mouthing “ _Candidate_?” at him. He shrugs. The _sentiment_ was Joe’s, even if the wording came out in the form of a carefully bland compliment.

“You were my first thought,” Joe fills in. “You do good work with the Remparts.”

A smile breaks over Patrice’s face at that, a warm pride filtering through her chest. “I’ve got good kids.”

“Winning the Memorial Cup your first year as head coach is also impressive.”

“I’m extremely proud of my team that year.” It hadn’t been an elegant beginning to the season, but she’d made certain that it ended the right way, on _her_ terms, with the team gazing in awe at their Cup. It was the sort of season she’s comfortable with; it had been fought and bruised, nothing pretty, and when she’d finally held the Memorial Cup up above the heads of her team while cameras flashed it had been worth every weekend away from home, every night spent up late after the boys had gone to sleep, examining attacks and plays with her chin balanced in her palm. “I’m proud of the team every year, but that was a special group. It was a privilege to coach them.”

“So, what are your thoughts on coming back up to the big time?”

That’s the crux of all of it, what the polite talk and questions have been circling around, and Patrice tries hard not to sigh with the relief of finally getting down to it. “A big part of my decision is not gonna be about whether I’m _able_ to coach in the NHL or if I’m _ready_ to step up an take that challenge. It’s about my children, and this is where my decision is gonna have to be made.”

As thrilling as the prospect is, she has a life she can’t abandon here.

(There’s no guarantee of a chance like this ever coming around again.)

“And the . . . incidents in Quebec?” Josh says the word ‘incidents’ like a society lady being forced to pick up something icky.

Which, Patrice considers grimly, he sort of is. “The co-owner of the Saguenéens was stopping our bus. Maybe I am quick to draw, but considering who I am, can you blame me?” She can remember all of it, the posturing and belligerence, looking back at the faces of the kids staring at her from the bus – _her_ kids, their parents _trusted_ her with them – and thinking _I can’t let them see me be bullied._

“So you threw a _punch_ at him?”

There’s nothing worse than the look on her anger management coach’s face when she’d been sent back in, slinking through the door while she shook her head like Patrice had forgotten everything. Joe’s look is closing in on its heels, though. “. . . I called to apologize, after.”

“And you don’t plan on punching any other owners or coaches in the future?”

Patrice offers Josh a smile that shows more teeth than is decent. “I guess it depend on which coaches an owners I run into this season.”

\\\

“So, they want you back?” Stéphane sounds excited, more excited than a man in his position really has reason to be. Since the NHL turned into a distant memory for him he’s taken to living vicariously through his sister. It’d be flattering if it wasn’t extremely annoying.

“It certainly looks that way.” Patrice shoots a glance at Jonathan, who’s watching her with one ear while he plays video games with his brother. Callan is focused entirely on the screen, with a level of intensity she finds herself admiring. “We talked about it, at least.”

“And you’re gonna sign, right?”

“You make it seem so easy.” She can’t stop picking at her nails, and the tips are looking worse for the wear. With everything piling on, she’s not sure when she’ll get a chance to get them done again.

Stéphane sighs, long suffering like he’s explaining potty training to a puppy that doesn’t get it. “It is. The Avalanche come to you, and for the sake of argument let’s say that they want a new head coach. By _some coincidence_ you happen to be a head coach. They ask you to be the new head coach; you say yes, sign some papers and boom. New head coach.”

“It’s _not_ that easy.”

“Since when?”

“Let’s see, how old am I now?” she deadpans.

There’s a lengthy pause. “Okay, fine. Maybe it’s not that easy for _you_ , or it _wasn’t_. But this isn’t ‘93 anymore. You’re not trying to do this all by yourself.”

“No, I’m not.” Her eyes fall, involuntarily, to Callan and Jonathan again. No, it isn’t ‘93 anymore – there’s Quick in LA, Stamkos in Florida, Ruggiero and Crosby in the east, Manon in the front office and those are just the beginning. There are linesmen and prospects and they’ve gone from an impossibility to being merely a long shot to make it to the NHL, but that doesn’t mean the league has gotten easier on them, not by any stretch. If anything it’s gotten exponentially more complicated, but that’s nothing she can say out loud without bordering on ungratefulness.

“You’re at least thinking about it, right?”

“Do you want to sign it for me?” she snaps. “After I see the contract . . . maybe. You’re right; it’s not the ‘90s anymore, and Joe’s not like other executives, but I’m not like other coaches, and there are things I need to think about. Logistics.” She doesn’t say “children” because she shouldn’t have to. After all, not doing it alone anymore is a double edged sword. “Let’s face it; I have a good setup here. I coach and I’m GM, I won the Memorial Cup and I have a life here. I don’t _have_ to go back. My quality of life here is extraordinary.”

“You will, though.”

“. . . Yes.”

She has every intention to wait until dinner to broach the subject with the boys. There’s something comforting about the kitchen table, it’s the way she was raised and the way she raised her boys, and it feels _safer_ somehow. But, like kids sometimes have a skill in doing, Jonathan blows that out of the water the second he slips into his seat, before Patrice even has dinner on the table.

“You wanna go back to Denver, don’t you?”

Adolescence is coming early to the household, adolescence and an edge of the same defiance Patrice sees reflected in the mirror each morning. No preamble, no faked coyness or curiosity. Jonathan just asks, and Callan immediately looks at her with big eyes, unreadable as fear or excitement.

Jonathan has always been the most like her; it both frightens and delights her in turn.

Patrice sighs, gets the dinner onto the table, and shakes her oven mitts onto the counter. “I’m thinking about it, yes.”

“You were watching Avalanche games last week,” Jonathan says, daring her to argue. “I haven’t seen you watch them since papa retired.”

There’s no reason to feel guilty about that. There really isn’t. She’s allowed to watch her ex’s games. That’s a thing people do. _Some_ people. Patrice people.

“And Joe Sakic was here. You met with him. So you want to go back.”

So much for dinner; Callan has that look like he’d stop with his fork halfway to his mouth and freeze there. Patrice serves them anyway. “I’m thinking about it. Joe wanted me to consider being his head coach. I haven’t agreed to anything yet, because the decision to move is complicated.”

“That just means we’ll live in Denver all the time, right? And you’ll go back to Quebec in the summer and leave us with papa. It’s not _that_ different.”

She feels offended for some reason. “I won’t _leave_ you.”

“It’s where we are most the summer anyway.”

There’s so much Patrice could say to that, about how much she hates the summers, how fiercely jealous she is of Adam and his summers, but she has winter and spring and autumn, and there’s no benefit in being petty in front of them. “I won’t leave you in Denver,” she repeats, hating the shrug Jonathan throws her way.

“There’ll be different schools for you, and new friends.” She stops herself from warning them about English, because her boys are not her, and they are effortlessly bilingual in a way that overwhelms her sometimes. They’ve had Adam as their teacher from a young age.

Callan keeps looking concerned, and as they talk he gets still. Jonathan appears to be thinking. “We have friends in Denver, too.”

“I don’t want to leave my friends,” Callan murmurs, head low like he’s disappointing her.

“We can still have our friends. It won’t be so bad, Cal.” Jonathan talks a little too old, like he’s remembering Columbus and the friends he hasn’t spoken to since they left. “And we’ll get to see papa more. Like, a lot more. And when maman’s on road trips we can stay with him instead of mémé.”

It takes a second for Callan to light up at the prospect of his father, yelping “papa!” in the same tone he uses for Christmas and new equipment.

“I won’t decide this without your okay,” Patrice promises, and she’s a little shocked to realize that she means it. If they say no she’ll stay with the Remparts, coach and keep them home in Quebec because they’re _everything_. That’s . . .

That probably should have been the case a lot earlier; it might have saved her some of these complications.

Jonathan has been a hockey kid for a long time, his whole life, and that life saw more uprooting than Callan’s, who’s only really known Quebec. His experience is a blessing, is a reassurance when Callan has no idea what’s in store and is frightened of that uncertainty.

That’s why it means so much when it’s Callan who says, “Do it, maman. We want you to do it.”

She loves them so much it’s hard to breathe.

\\\

Patrice spends most of the morning with her lawyers after dropping the boys off at a friend’s house. Before the actual contract she needs to decide logistics and terms and where she’ll go up or down and where she won’t go anywhere at all.

Money has never been an issue, and contract length is never a guarantee, but control is one place that Patrice will not budge on, and she’s not shy (never shy) about it.

“You’re asking for input on hiring?” Josh sounds skeptical even over the expensive video conference.

“An firings. Trades. Drafts.”

“Most coaches don’t have that level of input. I can’t think of a single one, in fact.”

She shrugs. “Most coaches aren’t coaches an GMs. I have that. You might as well get the money worth.”

It’s a hang-up in the negotiations, and that’s fine. Patrice knows what she needs in order to do her job the way she’s used to doing it, the way she’s had _success_ doing it, and she needs a say in who’s on her bench, not just how they’ll be used.

“I listen to Joe, of course. He’d be my boss, an has the final say, but I want my say in it, too.”

“You want a collaboration?” Josh looks highly confused about the negotiations that have quickly gone the way they normally do when Patrice’s involved, which is to say off in unexplored directions.

“I want some _stability_.” There’re few jobs in the NHL more disposable than coach – they share a level of respect with cotton balls and dime store novels – and she’s had her share of powerlessness her first few seasons in the NHL.

Never again.

“I don’t care about my salary, an I can take four years on the contract, if there’s an option on the fifth. Give me at _least_ as much time as Sacco got, if I’m gonna fix his mistakes.” She looks over at Joe, who’s mostly been hanging out and watching the negotiations with a bemused look on his face. “Joe, back me up on this. We’re a good team, we got good heads for this, an I respect you.” _So, so much_. “I respect your decisions, but I want a chance to be a team on this.”

“Goalies work solo.” Joe looks extremely amused.

“I’m not a goalie anymore.”

“You’ll always be a goalie.” And everything that comes with it, cool head under fire and bulldog tenacity. “I have no problem with it, Josh. As long as Patrice respects my ultimate decisions –”

“I do.”

“–then I have no objections. We want her because of her hockey mind; why not make full use of it?”

Josh has to defer to Joe, to a certain extent. If Joe was cut in half there’d be ice and blue lines inside, and Josh was always a basketball man himself, so in matters that relate to intuition and gut feelings he _has_ to trust Joe, because Joe has had a lifetime to develop instincts that Josh never will.

Patrice waits patiently while Josh discusses this, just out of hearing, hands folded in front of her and trying to radiate polite interest.

“After considering your experience, and your legacy with the organization, the title we’ll offer is VP of Hockey Operations. This comes with the understanding that your primary role will be coaching, and if there are disagreements between yourself and Joe, he will always have final say. In return we’ll give you input in personnel and player decisions.”

It’s nothing less than what she’d hoped for, but not quite what she expected. “I can agree to that.”

Patrice slips out of the conference room a few minutes later, leaves the team’s lawyers and her lawyers to their work of finalizing the language of the contract. She would be a terrible lawyer, doesn’t have the patience for the finer details of language, and she’s grateful hockey saved her from more than that one tragic year of pre-law.

The stroll to her office is measured. She downs a bottled water with trembling hands the moment she’s through the door, trying to replace the sweat trickling down her spine. After, Patrice presses her forehead to her desk and tries to will her heart to stop racing like a marathon.

\\\

Patrice wakes up with a bruiser of a headache, tension gathering inside her temples and setting up shop there.

The conversation with Mathieu hadn’t gone nearly as well as the one with the boys. They’re not engaged, they’re barely even dating because Mathieu is still young, and Patrice is nothing if not gun shy about anything that even begins to mirror the path she’d followed when she was younger. He reminds her a touch of Alex when they had dated, so impossibly naive. Mathieu is good with the boys, and he’s something easy that doesn’t factor into her decision at all. At this point that’s exactly what she needs in her life.

Mathieu didn’t take it gracefully, had sputtered in denial and then gotten angry, snarled “You got a good thing in Quebec, a sweet deal, and you’re gonna throw it away to run back to _Denver_?” when what he really meant was “run back to _him_ ”. Mathieu had gotten angry and Patrice hadn’t apologized because even years later the only person she’d commit to is the one she already _had_ (and even she’ll admit she failed miserably at that) and there had never been any misrepresentation about that fact. Somewhere deep inside she’s still Catholic, after all.

The next important task to come up between putting in 12-hour days preparing the Remparts to function without her, then going home and packing up a household, is how to kill her brother without getting caught. She doesn’t have time to waste wallowing in a jail, but it frankly needs to be done.

She’s at home watching a movie with the boys, trying to give them her night like she so rarely can, when her cell rings. Patrice still recognizes Dater’s number after all these years, carries it in her phone as some sort of nostalgia thing, and when that ring is interrupted by Joe she _knows_ something went down.

She really needs to learn how to put a Google alert on her name or something.

“You do know you’re not officially hired, right?” Joe sounds mild and amused, but there’s an undercurrent of something that Patrice can’t put her finger on, something that has her sitting a little straighter in her seat.

She excuses herself from the movie, leaving Jonathan staring at her back with a vaguely accusatory expression. “Um, yes? What happen?”

“You may need to have a conversation with your brother about shooting off early, because I have Dater hounding my ass for confirmation that you’re our new head coach. Something online, apparently.”

Her hand settles immediately to her head with a sigh that’s only slightly overblown. Back in the Lacroix era that sort of a breach in silence, actual communication with the press instead of sound bites and cliché, would have been a disaster of epic proportions, equivalent to a Hindenburg or a Bryzgalov. Pierre Lacroix believed with religious fanaticism that protection lay in secrecy, that noncooperation should be the default state towards a media that was continually out to trip him up and tear him low. Maybe his early work as Patrice’s agent had helped fuel that level of paranoia; it certainly did nothing to get rid of it.

Joe seems only slightly vexed by the leak, more irritated than angry.

“I know we said we’d be more open, but this is too much. Do something about that, Patrice.”

It’s a direct order, the first test of Joe being her boss, and it rankles but he’s right, dammit.

“I’ll deal with this.” Patrice’s voice is shaking, and she works to tamp it down, remain steady.

“I hate you a little bit right now,” is probably a terrible way of beginning a conversation, but this is her brother and not her husband so there’s more forgiveness there.

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and then a hesitant, “It’s great news! I would have thought you’d want to share —”

“— _I_ would want to share, not to have my brother share _for_ me —”

“— so I just decided —”

“— there’s nothing for _you_ to decide —”

“— and when the reporters —”

“There are _reporters_?” She’s dangerously close to yelling at this point.

Stéphane finally pauses. Her brother knows that tone, it’s the tone that means Patrice is going to throw down even though she’s younger and smaller, and she’s probably going to win. “A few of them, the _Denver Post_ guy. Dater.”

Patrice has been dodging her phone the past few days, and it resulted in a sarcastic text from her maman, but there’s nothing she can say while the paperwork goes through, while lawyers haggle over verbiage. So she doesn’t return calls and waits to hear that it’s been finalized, and meanwhile her brother is busy on Facebook apparently.

Her voice has ticked down a few octaves, deep breaths easing the anger down. “You are taking that post _down_ , Stéph.”

“Fine, fine.” He doesn’t sound as blasé as his words indicate.

“And if you talk to one more person I am crushing your _balls_ with that phone. If Pierre was still in charge this could’ve meant my _job_ , you realize that?”

There’s an audible _wince_. “I’m sorry?”

“You had better be, do you have any idea how pissed Joe is? Joe _never_ gets pissed.” And Joe isn’t pissed now, but there’s truly no need to admit that when Stéphane’s little hiss of breath means that threat hit harder than any one Patrice could dish out on her own. Her brother has damn near idolized Joe for _decades_.

“Alex never does this shit,” Patrice sighs.

“Alex isn’t your favorite brother.”

“Neither are you.”

The headline hits the _Post_ a few hours later, almost one in the morning by her watch.

_For all my friends I’d like you to know before the official news spreads that my sister will be the new coach of the Colorado Avalanch._

Sometimes her big brother is pretty amazing, actually.

\\\

Joe is waiting in the living room with the paperwork, flying back on the red eye to get this thing finalized. It’s a measure of respect that Patrice appreciates; she hugged Joe at the airport and found it difficult to let go. Even Callan had shaken his hand.

What Patrice’s dreading, with a deep and thrumming anxiety, is placing this call to Denver. She’s never anxious on the ice, behind the bench. But this — this has her twitchy and insecure.

She hadn’t really planned on calling, but then Joe had politely enquired if she’d talked to Adam yet. And then it had dawned on her that yeah, she probably should have done that ages ago. When the negotiations were just getting settled, probably. And then Joe gave her that _look_ , the Marriage Counselor Look he’d given them during those years when he was trying to save them from themselves, and Patrice had slunk away to the game room, calling Denver.

It’s symbolic, like the contract implied-in-fact, and it’s what feels hot and humid inside her chest.

It wasn’t a long process, a handful of days, but Patrice knows that Adam already knows, has heard the news from somewhere second hand. It hasn’t exactly been a secret; Stéphane only recently stopped running his mouth about it on Facebook and to everyone who called and thought to ask him about it. Probably Adam heard about it there, either from Stéphane or from Dater, who took it like a stolen ball and ran.

And maybe he heard about it for certain from Joe. It’s one thing to hear it from Joe, because he’s _Joe_.

It’s another to hear it from the blogs, and they’ll be posting the moment she signs the papers and shakes the appropriate hands. There’s no delay in information any more, no leeway and no wiggle room. This isn’t like before, where reports took hours or sometimes days to come out, could be covered and dealt with in the meantime. It’s not like when she left Fredericton and 9 goals against in her rearview mirror and drove straight for the Nordiques. That absence went unnoticed for almost a week.

Adam certainly already knows, but she can’t use that as an excuse because Adam has to hear it from her all the same. It’s her responsibility to finish what she starts.

Patrice is signing early to get it over with, let Joe get back to his family in a decent amount of time, and early in Quebec is indecently early in Denver. Knowing Adam he’s just getting up for a pre practice run, or the gym. Or maybe neither; she gave up the right to know what Adam does with his mornings any more.

“‘llo?” Adam sounds a lot like how she remembers him sounding when he’d just woken up. He’s been retired for a few years now, there’s a chance he’s taken to sleeping in.

Strange how after years of this, Patrice in Quebec with their sons and Adam in Denver with their team, how her stomach still aches a little when she hears his voice, her heart going so tight it hurts. “Hey, Adam.”

He lets out a sigh, but it’s not the good sort of sigh. It’s the long suffering sort. “Patrice, it’s five A.M. here.”

That feels a little sharp, like rejection inside her chest. It makes her snappish. “I’m coming back to Denver. Joe offered me the head coaching position an I accepted.”

“I seem to have read that somewhere.” Across the connection it’s hard to tell if he’s making a joke, especially with the patented Footer monotone in full force.

She rolls her eyes, shoving a hand through her hair. “Stéphane needs a hobby since he retired.”

Adam falls silent, and he’s either fallen asleep or he’s waiting for Patrice to say what she’s been leading up to the whole conversation. Silences between them are so damn awkward, she feels compelled to talk just to shake it off. “I’m signing the papers in a minute.”

Apparently he’s not asleep, because he immediately perks up with “Then Jonathan and Callan are coming home?”

“Of _course_ they’ll be in Denver.” There’s irritation there, but she lets the ‘home’ comment go, which she feels surely makes her the bigger person in this instance.

Adam sounds so fucking _happy_. “With us both in the city maybe we can rework custody . . .”

“We’ll see about that later.” It happens on rote, a phrase that’s become as automatic as “No comment” on game day. She can tell it pisses Adam off as much as it pissed her off back when she had to say it so often.

_Fuck_. She’s going to need to get used to saying it again.

“What happened?” He sounds resigned — the strangeness of that in Adam’s voice stops her, makes her pull in a breath. “That we can’t agree on something that simple.”

Just like the advent of the Internet has made it hard to hold back a story, cell phones have made it hard to hide from each other. She’s not sure if that’s good or bad, but she does know that Jonathan has always had his father’s eyes. “After the holiday, we’ll be flying in. I’ll tell Josh he does not need to send a car.”

The boys must’ve woken up sometime while they were talking. Callan never knew Joe the way Jonathan does, but he’s still sitting on the couch next to him with his head on Jonathan’s arm, blinking half-awake eyes and trying to look alert. Jonathan looks bored to death, swinging his legs against the couch with steady thumps and keeping an eye on the silent figures in suits, waiting to witness this.

“All right, let’s make this official.” She strides into the room; Callan makes to jump up and hug her but Jonathan taps his arm and holds him on the couch. Joe pulls out the papers and Patrice skims them, a nervous habit she built back when contracts got switched out if you weren’t looking. The bad old good old days. It takes a split second for the lawyers to approve it.

She signs the paperwork without a lot of preamble, hugs Joe with a tightness that borders on pain, then rounds up her boys to get them ready for swim practice.

\\\

The Memorial Day weekend gives them a little bit of leeway to make plans. The news hits the web and Denver collectively loses its shit, and Patrice focuses on things like supervising the packing and keeping the boys from killing each other rather than worry about her homecoming. She’s free to answer questions now, but she finds that’s secondary to the task of getting a household packed up and ready for a new phase. It’s nothing she hasn’t done before, packing Adam up for Columbus, herself for Quebec, but it feels different to supervise the boys.

“Maman, what does ‘botch’ mean?” Callan asks, looking up from his packing to watch Hockey Night in Canada.

Patrice spares a glance towards the TV and, seeing the source, instantly dismisses its importance. “Botching means to mess something up.”

His eyebrows furrow and he keeps staring at the TV. “Why would Joe want to mess up the Avalanche?”

“He means Joe messed up when he hired maman to be the coach,” Jonathan grumbles, his voice coming out like a terrier’s growl, all squeaky and fierce.

“Why would maman want to mess up the Avalanche?” Callan rolls his eyes to her in search of all of the answers, and all she can think is _thank you_ so much _for making me explain this to my son_. “It’s because some people think that I can’t do the job right.”

“You did really good with the Remparts.”

“The NHL is . . . different, Callan. There are some boys in the NHL and on the TV who get scared when things change.” She smoothes her hand over his head, almost overwhelmed with a sudden fierce protectiveness. “I just have to show them I’ll do really good with the Avalanche, too.”

Callan is still at the age where he accepts her explanations without question. Jonathan has progressed past that sometime in the past six months.

“I don’t like them saying that about you,” he mumbles, shoving things into his bag with motions bordering on aggressive.

“That’s why we’ll prove him wrong, won’t we?” Jonathan’s too young to recognize the glint in her eyes, but he knows exactly what that smile means. He smiles back.

They’re far from done. There will probably be trips to Quebec for the strange things they somehow forgot but can’t live without. The moving company is meeting them in Denver once Patrice has an honest to god house bought, and for now she’s got a suite at the Oxford and enough luggage to let them survive until she has time to go out with a Realtor.

The trip to Denver is 99% uneventful. Josh charters a flight for them that gets in and out of Quebec quickly and quietly and, just to make the experience even more interesting, well past their bedtime. Callan and Jonathan are wired and electric the whole way through the boarding process, pressed shoulder to shoulder and then dozing off on each other the minute their butts hit the seats.

Patrice stays awake and watches out the window. It’s the only way she’s found to handle the claustrophobia that kicks in on airplanes. She’ll gladly take day long trips with a team of teenagers in a bus that smells of Doritos and body odor before she’ll take a plane, but unfortunately that’s an option that’s slipping out of her fingers the closer they get to Denver.

She should have taken the job with Montreal. East coast travel is so _easy_.

It’s stupid to wish that Adam was there. In a plane crash Adam would do nothing except die just as messily as her, but she wishes Adam was on this flight with them all the same, for the reassurance that his presence gives. During flights in their playing days Patrice had always sat with Adam, sometimes gripping his arm, and Adam had massaged at the tight tendons in her wrists and talked her down. He’s so blasé about the whole thing, as though there’s nothing more natural than this, hurtling through the air in a self-contained can . . .

Her claustrophobia is kicking in. She takes a few deep breaths and stops thinking about Adam.

Aside from flight nerves the only major hang-up comes when Callan wakes up and, still foggy and frightened somewhere over Nebraska, mistakes Going to Denver For the Presser with Going to Denver Forever, and starts crying because he left his PS3 in Quebec.

“Maman left her hockey cards back home, too,” Jonathan chides him, mainly angry about being woken up. He rubs at his eyes, and then glares at his brother. “Stop being a baby, the movers are bringing it.”

“ _Jonathan_. Apologize.” She tries not to show how pride flickers up at the way Jonathan says ‘home’, like she’s won some sort of competition the boys aren’t aware they’re part of.

“Sorry, Callan.”

Callan falls back to sleep shortly after, snuggled against his brother, but Jonathan stays up the rest of the flight, watching for the runway in silence and sulking.

Stepping off the plane onto the tarmac has a certain novelty to it. The air in Denver feels instantly different, lighter without the oppression of humidity, and it feels like a beginning, like a good change. Jonathan and Callan shuffle down the boarding ramp with feet that they’re barely picking up, gripping the handrail.

Adam’s SUV is parked near the hanger like he belongs there, like they used to park back when they were flying to Boston, or Washington, or LA. As soon as he sees them coming, Callan and Jonathan in their jammies and Patrice in her fleece vest and track pants, he pops the door open and gets out. Adam looks . . . his nose, that had broken early and often through his career, giving him a lopsided appearance that she’s always found charming, a real hockey face, and maybe it’s wistfulness more than reality talking when she looks at him and thinks _he hasn’t fucking changed_. The slope of his nose had aged him hard and fast when he was young, but there’s been no change to his face that she can detect since then. Patrice’s heart kicks up several levels, thudding against the inside of her rib cage in a way she doesn’t want to examine.

Callan immediately drops his backpack, mouth open in a huge O.

“Papa!” He’s across the tarmac and in Adam’s arms before any of them can blink, and Adam almost drops him before adjusting his grip and hoisting Callan up.

He’s really too old to be carried around, but he’s still small for his age and Adam apparently indulges him.

Whatever; Adam’s strong, he can take the weight.

“Hey, papa.” Jonathan is lagging behind a little trying to sound cool. He shifts his bag onto one shoulder so that he can pick Callan’s up off the ground. Callan buries his face in Adam’s shoulder, arms tight around his neck.

“Hey, Jonny.” He holds his free arm out and Jonathan all but collapses into him, arms around his waist while Adam squeezes his shoulders.

Patrice tries hard not to feel jealous of that.

Callan’s eyes are shiny bright when he lifts his head, and he pokes at Adam’s cheek to get his attention.

“Callan, don’t _poke_ ,” Adam sighs. It sounds like a lesson Adam’s been trying to instill in him, and that strikes her as odd because she’s never seen Callan do it before.

Callan makes a face at him that he quickly covers up by ducking back into his shoulder. “Papa, do you think you’ll coach us in hockey this year? Maman always said she’d coach us when we became Remparts but she’s gonna be too busy this year, but maybe you’ll be able to coach us?”

Patrice’s eyebrow pops up of its own regard and she can’t help looking at Adam with a question on her face, something like _Where did that come from?_

Adam looks a little bit blindsided by the question, but it only takes a few seconds for him recover. “I. I haven’t signed up or anything, but we can see I guess.” He looks at Patrice and shrugs, like _I have no idea_.

“Dutchy doesn’t live with us anymore, does he papa?”

“Not anymore.”

Jonathan’s gaze slips from disappointed to speculative too smoothly. “Can I have his room?”

Patrice and Adam trip over each other with “I don’t think so” and “ _No_.” The idea of the preteen with his own functional apartment has Patrice feeling a little tight in her skin.

Patrice has never been entirely sure what to do with Adam; a part of her feels like they should be mature enough to deal with it but clearly they’re not because with Callan making a handshake difficult they stand there on the concourse looking at each other and blinking a few times, caught in some appropriately old west standoff, waiting to see who draws first.

Adam juggles Callan for a few seconds, trying to get him settled, before he gives up. “Hey, Buddy. I can’t carry you around all day, you’re not little anymore.”

“He’s _totally_ still little.”

Adam takes his time putting Callan down, and he still runs over and punches his brother in the arm for that comment. “I’m not little!”

Jonathan rubs at his arm grudgingly. “Then don’t make papa carry you around like a baby.”

Callan ruffles up like an angry rooster, and Patrice goes to Adam to avoid laughing, which she’s quite sure would set a bad example.

“Welcome home,” Adam offers after a second.

“. . . It’s good to be back.” She had her sons here, lifted the Cup here. She loves Denver, in her heart where she stores precious things that she may never get again.

Adam can’t seem to decide if they should hug, or shake hands, or if he should hoist her up on his shoulders like he did Callan, so they settle for standing there and looking at each other from a little too far away.

It’s . . . really not a good compromise.

She rolls her eyes, shoving a hand through her hair, and tries not to notice how Adam follows the gesture. “ _Well_ , it’d be even better if it was in daylight.”

He doesn’t have an answer for that, which is okay since it isn’t exactly witty. “Your hair’s gotten longer. You look good.”

Her hand drops to her side, suddenly conscious of the narrow band of skin where her ring isn’t. “Eugh, you miss the mullet phase.” She’s not sure what exactly she’s trying to prove with that. That she’s changed and Adam hasn’t, or . . . something.

That’s a reminder, a sharp one, that teammates and roommates and rarely a minute apart has become _this_. Her brain keeps screaming some variation of _Save! Save!_ , like she’s got a net she’s supposed to be guarding, and she has to remind that part of her brain that she’s an adult who can totally handle this situation.

They’re saved from being forced to act like functioning adults by the chime of Patrice’s phone. She has to drop a few bags to get to it, and by the time she has it out Adam has them picked up.

It’s Joe, obviously. “How was the flight?”

She makes a face. “I hate them, an you know that. How you know we are in?”

“Adam called.”

She shoots him a look. Of _course_ he did. She settles for a neutral, “that was nice of him. We just land a minute ago. The flight was fine. Adam will get us around.”

“Get some rest; the press conference is scheduled for 10 am tomorrow.”

“You do that too. Sleep well, Joe.”

By the time she hangs up the moment has passed; they go back to behaving as though there’s nothing strange about seeing each other after years of _not_. It’s an elaborate game of make believe, but it’s easier for the boys than the alternative.

“You still own the same hockey bag.” It doesn’t sound like a question.

“It still fits my shit,” she replies. It’s a link back to what she was, back when she was a goalie, and she’s not ready to let it go. Not even ten years past its sell by date. Not until it dissolves into a puddle of frayed seams and sour sweat.

It’s probably not weird at all that Adam can still recognize her bag.

The argument between the boys has escalated steadily while they were talking, and devolved into name-calling. Adam scoops Callan up when he goes to punch Jonathan again and the older boy laughs.

“Both of you. _Cool it_.”

“Jon started it!” Callan’s back to tucking his face against Adam’s neck, tugging at his own earlobe – it’s been one of his tells since he was just a baby. He’s exhausted.

“I did not.” Jonathan’s sulky, his patience burning down at both ends. The novelty of Denver and Adam and the late night is finally running out; it’s been a _day_ for all of them.

“I don’t care who start it; I’m finishing it here. Callan, punching is not acceptable; we discuss this later.” She shares a look with Adam, exasperated and tired. “No one’s thinking right. Let’s get going.”

Adam bundles Callan into the backseat without a protest; he’s asleep almost as soon as his belt is buckled, head lolling. He probably won’t remember the argument when he wakes up. Patrice keeps looking over her shoulder to check on him, though.

God _damn_ she still hates that fucking demon horse.

“They still haven’t burn that thing?”

Adam looks over his shoulder at Blue Stallion, grinning. “Oh, it _has_ been a while.”

There’s something strangely melancholic about the car, riding shotgun with the boys in the back and the twists and turns, stops and starts of the road. It’s not until they’re almost home that it really dawns on her that it’s not _home_ they’re supposed to be headed towards.

“We got a room at the Oxford.” It sounds conversational, or at least that’s how she’s trying to make it.

Adam flicks a look at her, but keeps driving further away. “It’s past midnight.”

“That’s why I book us at the Oxford. They don’t _care_ it’s after midnight.”

“Patrice, the boys are exhausted.”

Adam’s aggressive reasonableness is ruffling her wrong. She crosses her arms and settles in for the argument. “Then you should probably stop driving the wrong direction.”

“It’s not the wrong direction; I’m going _home_.” He sounds more weary than annoyed. “Patrice, please. There’s no reason to make it into a big deal; my home is just closer.”

Because DIA might as well be DOA - nothing of value for miles.

Damn him. “They charge the office for the room.”

One hand lifts off the wheel to lazily bat it away. “Joe’ll understand. He can make Kroenke OK it.”

“That’s not the _point_.” The casual dismissal is rubbing her entirely wrong, the way his dismissals always do.

“Then what is?”

Smacking at him while he’s driving would be bad, because then they might careen off the road. She doesn’t want her first headline back in Denver to mention a crash. Brutal honesty usually hurts worse anyway. “Because I don’t wanna spend my first night back staying in my ex-husband’s guest bedroom, that’s my problem. You don’t listen.”

“Got existing plans?” Everything about Adam’s voice sounds soft and mild, curious, but there’s a flicker of something in the corner of his face. It’s the same look he used to get right after a blindside hit, when he was reeling and struggling to stay on his feet. Patrice looks sideways, doesn’t try to conceal the fact that she’s measuring him, but Adam keeps his eyes fixed on the road, giving no indication that he’s aware he’s being watched.

She feels like she’s being tested, but it’s not completely clear _how_. “. . . Just getting a night’s rest,” she says, slowly.

“Maman, can we _please_ just stay with papa tonight?” Jonathan looks long suffering and gloomy, Callan’s head lolling on his shoulder. She’s not sure if the blackness under Jonathan’s eyes is a result of the soft yellow of the street lights, or if it’s sleep pressing at him. “I really wanna go to bed.”

Jonathan had borne the worst of their arguments by virtue of being old enough to understand them. She remembers, still, the fights between her parents, at the end. How they can't stand to be in the same room even now, even to celebrate her accomplishments. Patrice swore she would never put her children in that same position. “I’m sorry, Jonathan. We’ll stay there for tonight. We all need to get some sleep, it sounds like.”

“My house is great for that.” Adam’s smiling, wide and bright, like he knows he’s won. Patrice can’t stop staring at him, a combination of shock and irritation, until she slumps back in her seat, feet propping on the dashboard.

Arguing is something they’ve always excelled at, but even she’s beginning to feel the edge of exhaustion. “Wake me when we get there.” She feels sleepy and comfortable in Adam’s car, warm and vulnerable.

It’s better to close her eyes and at least pretend she doesn't hear Adam's soft "Good talk" mumbled out soft and irritated.

It’s easier than watching the road and realizing that even late, lit by the narrow beam of his headlights, her body still anticipates all the curves in the road.

\\\

Patrice and Adam put the boys to bed in their rooms, the ones that Adam has kept somehow preserved and up-to-date all at once. They’ve got all their newest interests at hand, Jonathan with his music posters and Callan with his hockey, but there are also old toys that look like they haven’t been moved in a while, like something enshrined. They’d put them to bed, and Callan had asked to be tucked in even though Patrice hasn’t done that since he was five, and that had felt so much like normal it was hard to remember that they all had a new, different normal now.

Patrice said good night to Adam at the door of the master bedroom, hadn’t glanced inside even though she’d wanted to. Curiosity and masochism held hands in that doorway, and she wasn’t ready to push it, yet. She didn’t want to know if there was someone else who stayed in that room; the sharp and intensely jealous depth of her soul was too close to the surface when she thought about it.

She’d remained aloof, and her lingering irritation had helped with that, and then she’d trudged downstairs to Duchene’s old room.

The time zone is an advantage, this time around. Patrice is up and puttering before anyone else even thinks about getting up, and that gives her free rein to be nosy, at least in the basement. This is a safe type of curiosity, driving her from room to room as she sees what’s been done. This part of the house was never really hers, and it feels safe to explore; it’s as impersonal as taking a tour of IKEA. Which is apparently where Adam got most of the furniture.

Once that’s satisfied she makes her way upstairs, halting at the top when Adam looks over his shoulder and gestures to the coffee.

“I just made it,” he offers, which isn’t exactly an invitation, but sort of is. Patrice starts in on it, regardless.

“What you doing up?” Patrice will have makeup no later than 7:30, prep with Jean Martineau and his team, then the conference, so getting up at five seems perfectly acceptable. Adam has nowhere that he needs to be this early; there’s no reason for him to be up, except to make coffee in exchange for gratitude.

He shrugs, fiddles with his cup. “Old habits, I guess. Having you around brought them back.”

Patrice stiffens while digging for the cream, straightens up so quickly she almost takes her head out on the condiment rack in the fridge door. She can still remember some of their early morning habits, drowsy morning sex against the kitchen counter while the coffee brewed, her legs hiked around Adam’s hips and sharing his air. “Oh.”

He looks nothing but innocent. “And I knew you’d be up soon, so . . .” He trails off, and when he picks up it sounds accusatory. “You spent a lot of time downstairs.”

She’s not sure why “I had to make sure Dutchy took his porn with him” comes out, but it makes Adam laugh, deep and genuine, and she’ll never stop enjoying making Adam laugh. That’s one constant from what they were to what they are.

“I think that’s all electronic now,” he laughs, shaking his head slowly.

The idea is terrifying, for some reason. “Remind me to look at Jonathan’s computer soon.” She slides into the chair across from Adam, lips on the cup and blowing to cool it. It’s the same blend it used to be. “Thank you.”

Adam looks momentarily surprised. “You’re welcome.”

Patrice wants to ask if her gratitude is that surprising, but she’s afraid she knows the answer.

Jogging the neighborhood feels better, feels like revisiting her old haunts without worrying about changes and difference and the guaranteed pressure of the press conference on the horizon. She can just run and focus on nothing but the heat in her muscles and the speed of her heart. She moves down the same route she always ran, years ago, and the cars have changed but the houses are nearly all the same.

Out of the corner of her eye she can see someone invading her space, and she doesn’t have to look over to know that Adam’s joined her. They’ve done this enough over the years that she knows his breathing, the way his feet sound when they strike the pavement. So she doesn’t reach for her mace, bumps the volume up on her music and keeps going. Jogs aren’t either of their ideas of a fun time.

Their eyes meet at the next corner while they wait for traffic, and Adam gives her a little smirk that’s guaranteed to get under her skin in all the best ways. He starts pushing for a little more speed, and she’s game for that. She puts a little more distance between them with a burst, Adam catching up and then pushing her for just a little bit more, so it’s like the runs they used to have when they did this every morning, footfalls landing in a pattern and strides falling together naturally.

\\\

There are a lot of things Patrice hates about press conferences, and it hasn’t gotten any easier despite the occasional gigs as an analyst on l’Antichambre, bickering back and forth with Tremblay with the usual barely concealed disgust.

There’s still the stupid questions, the suit coat that, even tailored, doesn’t fit her shoulders _quite_ right, and the pancake makeup and careful hair that make her look like a strange, alternate version of herself. Like some sort of what-might-have-been scenario where her nose hadn’t been broken, where she had graduated and had children and left hockey for dead.

She still comes out of it ahead of Joe, though. Patrice might be wearing mascara that’ll take paint thinner to wash off, but Joe looks like swarm of jellyfish exploded on his head, and the curls still aren’t anything close to under control.

Jean is there with his team, and they go over their talking points and vet her speech while they wrap up setting the room. It’s good to see Jean – Patrice was his personal project when the Nordiques came over from Quebec with a woman goalie on their roster, and through navigating that particular mine field together they’ve come to understand each other quite well. From what she can tell Jean has farmed Paulina Stastny out to some of his protégés, but he’s still handling Patrice’s talking points, which feels sweetly nostalgic.

Once they’re released to the press room – one of the restaurants that’s been converted for this purpose – it’s still a game of waiting for the cameras to get set up, for Altitude to give the go ahead to flip their live switches and actually get to work.

Three of her players are there in the front row: Stastny, who Patrice knows because of Peter Stastny taking pot shots at her back in the day; their young captain, Landeskog; and Jiggy. The boys are in the front row as well, and Callan starts waving excitedly, his hair slicked back and his grey sport coat unbuttoned. He looks like a little gentleman, and Patrice wonders when time began to move so quickly.

Adam is seated next to Jiggy, but leaned over him and laughing with Stastny over something, and her gut tightens up in an uncomfortable way, something like stage fright and yet _not_.

Adam was never called to play the role of hockey spouse before; he was too busy being a player himself, and that role was so tenuously undefined when they’d begun this. The closest he had ever come to playing that traditional role was during her retirement presser, seated next to her with a placard at his elbow to give silent support. Now there’s a _precedent_ , giving Adam a role somewhere between representative of the old guard of the team and the father of Patrice’s sons, and that’s an awkward place for anyone to occupy. Adam seems to fit into it with more grace than Patrice ever did back in Columbus, back when she was struggling to try.

She’s quite sure Josh says some flattering things. She’s _positive_ that Joe does. Stuff about their faith in her return, her dedication to the game and the team, but all she can focus on is Adam, listening with an expression of aggressive politeness on his face.

“And now, I’m very proud to introduce our new head coach, and Vice President of Hockey Operations, Patrice Roy.”

Joe’s grinning at her like _pride_ , and it’s a struggle to remember that this is necessary, when all she wants is to launch into the job, hit the ice with speed and just go.

Patrice can feel her heart somewhere in her throat, and it takes a second to pull her mind away from Adam and back to the speech in front of her. “Ten years ago, to the day, I was in this very same room, announcing my retirement as an NHL player. But I soon realized that my passion for the game of hockey never left me.”

The words are halting and difficult, a rough struggle as though English is as foreign as her first presser. It’s nerves, the nerves she hates to show but can’t excise, and the sudden distraction of Adam isn’t helping. English is stupidly hard to pronounce at the best of times.

If Joe knew he was coming and said nothing then there will be _words_.

Patrice keeps her eyes resolutely ahead, and doesn’t roll them a single time during the Q&A. It’s not like she doesn’t realize that she’s something of a legend here. She’d barely made it through buying coffee this morning because people kept showing up, kept wanting to congratulate her and welcome her home.

So it’s not like she doesn’t understand that she’s got a lot of hero worship to shoulder here, but she’s sitting at a table with Joe Sakic so at least she’s not alone.

“What’re your thoughts on being the first female head coach in the NHL?”

“Well, someone had to be, an I’m a great choice for breaking that ice.” She grins, easy charm, and lets them make of it what they want.

“How’s it feel to be back in Denver?”

That’s easy, easy questions are awesome, and she takes them quickly and efficiently. There’s even a question about _who she’s wearing_ like this is a Red Carpet instead of a press conference, and she plays that perfectly straight, so sincere it cycles right around to sarcasm.

Joe kicks her under the edge of the table, so she outs him as a Hugo Boss man before pursuing more questions. Bouling gets sick of the powder puffs and fires up with “How do you respond to the fans that say you’re a nostalgia hire?”

She wants to laugh, and doesn’t. It stings like all threats of nepotism should. “Fair enough to hear that. It doesn’t bother me one bit. I don’t wanna seem cocky by saying this an I don’t have a crystal ball, but there’re not too many rookie coaches saying they’re coaching after winning two Stanley Cups as a player an a Memorial Cup as a coach. To be honest with you, I check one interesting stat: 100 percent of the coaches who are coaching now in the NHL were rookies at one time in their careers.”

She takes a pull of water while the polite chuckles die down. “My number one quality here is that I’m not afraid to put in that time.”

\\\

**Summer**

\\\

Patrice hates house hunting. There’s something weirdly awkward about it, reminds her of her maman and Michele, which is probably why she’s still at Adam’s place weeks down the road, even after she’s got her shit unpacked in her office and her car driven down to her. At first it made sense; she had a lot of work to be done at the office, and taking time to house hunt wasn’t prudent. Then she delayed it because they had trips planned, flying out to watch the Memorial Cup and get a look at MacKinnon, her and Joe, start her lobbying efforts with him and get Nathan drafted as quick as possible.

Then it gets to the point where it’s comfortable, despite all logic pointing to the ridiculousness of the situation, and she lets it slip her mind, in favor of more important things.

Joe doesn’t say anything, in that polite way of his, but Patrice has basically become Adam’s new Dutchy, lurking in the basement and parking in his garage, and everyone knows to find her there. Not discussing it is working wonders; it was great when they were married and it’s great now, when Patrice hauls herself up from the basement to make coffee at a painfully early hour, leaves it brewing for Adam before heading out the door to the office. Adam has dinner ready for the boys when she gets back, and she eats with them because there’s always extra.

Aside from the fact that Adam doesn’t drive to the rink with her, it’s really not that different from how it was when they were players. Well, that and the fact that they avoid physical proximity, while they used to trip over each other even before they got involved.

“Does it ever occur to you that this is weird?”

Patrice pauses in her single minded pursuit of dinner – chicken this time, ordered in from somewhere and kept warm in the oven for her – to actually _notice_ that Adam is there, puttering around the kitchen in sweats and a well worn tee.

“Weird?” she says finally, pulling out the containers and starting in on them, not bothering with plates, or sitting for that matter. Without the boys in the room she can afford to be a little bit of a bad example.

“Y’know what I mean.”

She knows exactly what Adam means, she just hoped he hadn’t noticed. Somehow. “You were the one who ask me to stay.”

Adam grunts, goes back to unloading the dishwasher. “Overnight, because it was late, and I didn’t want to mess with LoDo. It’s not like I’m making you stay. Hotels are still a thing.” He props himself against the counter, watching Patrice chew for a few seconds. She suddenly feels self-conscious, but the cabinet with the dishes is also the cabinet behind Adam’s head, and she’s not feeling particularly brave.

“I don’t wanna have the boys at a hotel.” It’s true, the thought of giving them over to Adam and his house when she’s in a hotel gives Patrice an itchy edge, like Adam is doing a better job at being the settled parent.

Adam looks frustrated, that glower that gets more intimidating between the scars and the ragged slope of his nose. Patrice suddenly finds herself wondering if he still snores as terribly as he used to; it’s an uncomfortable thought. “Patty, we can’t keep _going_ like this. We separated a long time ago; we’ve each got lives that we need to get back to. We can’t _do that_ while we’re acting like nothing happened!”

“I’m not acting!” Her appetite is waning. She pokes at the chicken, rotating it in the container to see if a different half of it looks more appetizing. It doesn’t.

She had Mathieu, and Adam is an athlete in a town that loves its sports stars. It just makes sense.

In some deep and fundamental way Adam still felt like _hers_ , and having that illusion broken makes this primal _thing_ flare up inside her, about eight years and several thousand dollars too late.

It’s a scary thought. Because she feels that burn of jealousy.

But it doesn’t feel _right_. It’s not like she feels when the boys speak longingly of Denver, of Footer Sandwiches, that small and petty little thing that makes her want to defend what she considers _hers_.

It feels like a wolf without her mate – a mixture of heartache and something weird and fiercely vicious, like betrayal.

Adam keeps _looking_ in this completely unassuming and infuriating way, and she paws at her hair, trying to distract with her hands.

“Then don’t pretend we can keep going like this.”

There’s no offer there, no plea for reconciliation, because they’ve been here before, in the kitchen in Columbus, in a house where they made a life for themselves, or tried to, and if it didn’t work then there’s no reason to believe they can handle it this time around. Adam looks tired, and a little defeated, like he’s lost some invisible battle by admitting that. But he says it straight up, the way he’s always said things, even things he clearly didn’t want to say.

Patrice gulps, catches her breath in her throat and holds it to quell any nervous hiccups.

“I’ll. Jean has . . . There will be a house by the end of the week.”

Adam nods slowly. He doesn’t offer to let her stay, he doesn’t make any trite comments about ‘what’s mine is yours’ or ‘as long as you need’. He’s already tipped his hand like that once before.

Patrice takes a huge bite of chicken that burns like bravado all the way down her throat.

\\\

Patrice is on the line with François when Adam brings the boys over. She’s spinning her chair back and forth, handset cradled between her ear and shoulder.

She sets down the letter opener she was balancing on her finger to invite everyone in, not breaking the flow of the conversation. “François, I want you here. You have notes on Jiggy already, and if we have any chance of recouping Varlamov I need you to work with him like you worked with me. He’s a big, strong presence in the net, and I have absolute faith we can win a Stanley Cup with him, if we just work out some bad habits. With your guidance.”

“Allaire?” Adam mouths, remembering enough Québécois to catch that much through the rapid fire. She nods, an awkward half smile of greeting. François is making sounds of uncertainty, the move and his age and the evolution of goaltending in the NHL and she needs her thoughts on him to weave through that web.

It’s almost adorable, like he wasn’t mostly responsible for that evolution in the first place. Like he wouldn’t jump at the chance to work with her again, even if Patrice will be on the sidelines this time around.

Interruption is something François forgives her for, so she stops him before he gets balls deep in denial. “Jiggy was right, you know; the goalie coach situation here is shameful. Joe and I have discussed it, and you’re the one I trust to fix it.” Jonathan’s already whipped out his phone and is busy playing on it. Callan looks helplessly sheepish at her, which means he’s forgotten his phone at home. Patrice unlocks her tablet and hands it to him without a word, waving them to the guest chairs.

Her lap is the only empty spot left in the office; Adam stays standing at the door.

“Give it some thought, then. You would be an absolute asset; after all, look what you did with me.” No harm in buttering him up, greasing the gears to get a little bit closer to building the support staff she deserves. No one that she knows is adverse to another Stanley Cup or three. “It’s an important decision; you can have all the time you need to decide. Thank you for the discussion, François.”

She hangs the phone up blind, reaching behind her for the base. It’s only then that she stops to acknowledge the interruption. “How are my boys?”

“We’re doing good.” The response is so ingrained neither one of them notices when Adam includes himself until it’s already out.

To his credit Adam doesn’t blush or react in any way. He’s always tilted towards stoic, and even shock doesn’t sway his reaction. Patrice darts her eyes away, settling on the boys as her safest bet to avoid any sort of meaning-laden eye contact.

“They wondered if you wanted lunch,” he continues, as though nothing slipped.

“Is it . . .” The clock on the desktop says 2:15. “Late. Oh.” She taps into her email, to check if there’s anything that requires her immediate attention. Since coming back to Denver she’s lapsed back into old habits, eating lunch at her desk with one hand or skipping it entirely. She closes out, locks up everything, and lets them abscond with her. She doesn’t even protest when they head past the break room and out to the parking lot.

She just observes that she already has lunch in there. That doesn’t count as protesting.

“We’re not eating at the Can,” Adam retorts. “You spend too much time there anyway.”

“How do you know?”

He casts a glance at the back seat, where the boys are absorbed in whatever they’re doing on their devices and blessedly silent.

Patrice scowls. She has not been neglecting her kids, dammit.

“I just know they’ve spent most evenings with me, and the only way you’d allow _that_ without protest is if you were locked up in the office.” He navigates into traffic, leaving Patrice silent with the evidence of how well he still knows her fluttering around in her head.

“I’ve never tried to keep them from you.”

“You haven’t. I appreciate that. And I’m not complaining that they’re with me, now. They don’t mind, for the most part. But someone needs to drag you out of the office for your own sake, sometimes. It’s not healthy.”

She rests her head against the glass, allowing the exhaustion to hit her. “There’s just so much to be done still.”

“It’ll still get done if you eat lunch and remember to go home sometimes.”

“Yes, _Dad_.”

Adam makes a sound of pained disappointment, checking his mirrors before responding. “I’m trying to look out for you a little. It’s not an easy job to give up, Patty.”

That gives her a sweetly warm flush, a glow of safety that she hadn’t really been aware she was looking for until Adam offered it to her.

She honestly misses that protective shell he used to lay over her when things were normal.

Patrice reaches over and squeezes his knee. She feels the muscles of his thigh tense under her palm, then slowly relax as he adapts to her touch.

“Thanks, Footer.”

“Someone has to do it,” he answers after a second, like he was scrolling through the appropriate responses, throwing the car into park.

Adam gets the door for her, holding it open with a smile like they used to share after a good penalty kill, a mixture of _I got you_ and _trust me_.

The look lasts only about a second, but there’s a moment when that second becomes statistically important, the last shot during a tied game going into overtime, a second that means everything in the _world_ , and that look goes from a moment of casual friendliness into something she wasn’t expecting at all. Adam smiles, open and sincere and even _happy_ , and it sets something inside Patrice’s chest sideways.

Watching Adam watch her, seeing the way his face softens like gratitude when she doesn’t push away – that’s pretty much all it takes, a blow in the gut that shocks through her like falling off the edge of the _world_ and fuck.

_Fuck_.

Out of everything screwed up and complicated Denver had in store for her, she was braced for all of them, had shored up her defenses and buckled down to face them the way she always had, face on and with a hint of swagger, a persona of unflinching confidence she’d built up so well that even she started to believe in it. She prepared for it all; a hostile dressing room, a losing season, angry media and plain old misogyny. Everything except the possibility of Adam Foote.

Her voice catches in her throat and stays there, forcing her to silence, because he’s _Adam_.

Patrice ducks away, focuses on Denver, the skyline and the mountains, and forces herself to breathe in her Game Day pattern, slow and smooth.

She wasn’t prepared to fall in love with him _all over again_

\\\

Patrice gets back from the office and spends more time than is healthy mindlessly wandering around the empty rooms that are still more _house_ than _home_ , especially with the boys gone. True to Adam’s observation she’d stayed at the office late, her and the night cleaning crew, till the lights of downtown Denver were in full blossom, and then she’d locked up and slunk home without supper, like she needed to punish herself for . . . something. Adam was right, she probably has spent too much time in the office of late, but it all comes down to putting in that time; it’s an offshoot of her years in the Q, of being the first woman in her position. She knows the work that must be done to be taken seriously.

Patrice snags a bottle out of the liquor cabinet, one of the glasses she has stocked up next to them, and slouches her way into the family room, abandoning her shoes somewhere along the way. Throwing herself onto the couch feels more like a teenage tantrum than something she should be doing, but she’s caught in a fit of apathy and doesn’t much give a fuck.

This isn’t . . . Adam’s house felt better, felt more _real_ , for all that none of the furniture was hers, and it fills her with an uncomfortable melancholy. _Her_ couch – she’d left Adam with the furniture and the house because when she goes she’s _gone_ – the couch she bought with her maman’s help, moved into her new house shortly after taking a new coaching job, a toddler and an infant in her arms, and that memory of similarities surprisingly doesn’t help _at all_. Patrice’s head falls back and she stares at the ceiling, like there are somehow answers up there in the wood grain.

So, she’s still in love with Adam. That’s . . . that’s an unexpected complication, one more in a season that’s guaranteed to be fraught with complications, one more that she doesn’t need, but denial did nothing and fighting did nothing and apparently she’s still in love with Adam, and that shit gets complicated _fast_.

Patrice swirls her drink for a second before slamming it back as though it personally offended her, propping her feet on the coffee table and wiggling her toes to get feeling back into them.

She’d considered and then discarded misplaced emotion. She’s always been a sucker for sexual tension simmering underneath plain old tension, but Adam’s not Ozzy. He’s nothing like the vague fascination she’d had with Detroit’s goalie, _that_ had been scratched with a fight and a couple hard fucks. Patrice isn’t much given to introspection, it reminds her too much of those soft, squishy bits of emotion that still leave her feeling uncomfortably vulnerable, but this is a genuine dilemma that demands she put that aside because it’s not about her, and it’s not even about Adam.

It’s about the two lives they’d brought into the world together, her little miracles, and she can’t afford to keep changing her direction when she’s busy steering them through life as well.

She’s an idiot, is what Patrice is slowly realizing. Still making those same mistakes she made as a kid, cocksure and defiant, unbendable, only this time instead of pushing a ref or throwing out her minor-league contract it was turning away from a contract that was supposed to mean a hell of a lot more than it did. And now she’s grasping at it like she never meant it to slip away in the first place, still wringing herself through all these _feelings_ , and she _hates_ that.

The kicker, the real _pisser_ , is there’s nothing left that can be done. There’s no fixing this, she’s got her own life now, Adam’s got his, and they don’t meet in the middle on the ice the way that they used to. She’s completely ignorant of the shape of Adam’s life now that she’s not in it, and there’s no working around it, no way to accidentally-on-purpose reshape his routine to include her. There had been a lot of heartache and a lot of pain, and now –

She’s not that _selfish_ anymore.

There’s no going back from that sort of thing. There were reasons – legitimate, actual _reasons_ that she’d put them all through that hell the first time around. Her life in the years since has been extraordinary. Patrice made the choice she _had_ to make; that doesn’t always translate to the right choice.

She’s nowhere near in the cups enough to drunk dial Adam, but she is in the right place to pity herself for a while, staring into her drink and wondering when the hell her life got so radically out of her control and took a leisurely detour right through the heart of Screwed Up Beyond Measure (Population: Patrice. Always Patrice). It makes her palms itch; there’s probably a lot to those rumors that call her a control freak, and the seemingly nonsensical path her emotions have decided to follow fluff her hackles up _so bad_. So Patrice drinks until that sharp thing in her chest loses its edges to a fuzzy, thoughtful softness, until the burn in her chest is acid reflux instead of heartache, and then she curls up on the couch and sleeps there because tomorrow might be another day, but it’s got the same damn questions built into it.

Going into the office hung over with a bad back isn’t her favorite way to go in, but by the third cup of coffee it’s gone, though her back will twinge for a few days, still. At least in the office everything is under her control.

That’s . . . that’s why she’s always liked it there.

\\\

There are two things Joe and Patrice agree upon, right out of the gate:

  1. That Patrice has free rein over selecting her bench staff, and as long as she doesn’t go mad with power Joe will rubber stamp them, because if there’s one thing Joe hates with an undying and violent passion it’s computers and paperwork.
  2. They want every remnant of Joe Sacco’s tenure scrubbed from the bench with extreme prejudice.



“I have,” Patrice points out wearily, “enough problems without all his mistake hanging around."

“I would have thought you’d call them challenges.”

She flashes her teeth at Joe. “Challenges are for later, with the team. Problems are everything here, behind the scene.”

Patrice drops some dossiers and picks on Joe’s desk the next day – _“Almost like you had a plan, or something,” Joe had remarked dryly_ – and he begins dutifully sifting through them with a grimace while Patrice lounges out in his office, flipping through the paper that Joe has delivered daily.

“The Bear? Really?”

She looks up from the sports page. “Yes. Andre has a great defensive mind. He was a real challenge in Quebec, and I think he’d do good with the team. I wanna keep Tim; the team really likes him, they trust him, and that means to me that he didn’t buy into Sacco deep enough to be considered a problem.”

“Joe Sacco was just a person, you know. Not the boogey-man.”

Patrice gives him one slow, almost reptilian blink. “Could’ve fooled me, way the team talks.”

Joe sighs, taps his pen against his lip. “No need to ask, I know you want Allaire; Tourigny. We’ll move Army up to assistant coach, and we’ll get an offer out to . . . Josh Duhamel? Seriously? For _tape review_?”

“Josh’s a good coach, he would know what to look for in the tapes.” It seems patently obvious to her.

“And you think he’ll sign on for that?” Joe looks up to meet her gaze, where it locks. Her lips lift up in a cocky grin.

“Fine, you’re Patrice Roy, whatever. Just be ready with a backup if he says no.”

“Yes, yes.” There’s real excitement building inside her gut. Patrice is looking at all the little pieces and seeing them slotting into place until the whole organization is humming, ticking along with the precision she always knew it was capable of, with a few pushes in the right direction.

Joe gets this look on his face, sideways speculative, and rolls his eyes towards her.

And stares. “ _What_?”

His smile has this edge, like he’s waiting for another shoe to drop. “What about Adam?”

Well, that’s a little out of nowhere. “What about him?”

“We bring him on for the defense.”

Patrice snorts. “Right. Your jokes are still not funny.”

“I mean it, though.” Joe looks like he’s playing the scenario out in his head to see how it comes out in the end, and by all indicators he likes what he sees. Patrice slits her eyes at him over the table, kicking at his shin. “Joe. Ey. No. No, no.”

“He’s really great with the team.” Joe doesn’t rub at his shin, but he does scoot out of kicking distance as smoothly as possible. “Wilson played better with him than he has since. And Dutchy . . . well, _you_ know.”

And hell yeah, she does. Duchene lived with Adam and her sons for two seasons because he loved the hell out of Adam. Adam had brought him to center ice with Jonathan and Callan during his final game, poised like his third son, so it’s fair to say the feeling’s mutual.

“Wilson played better because Adam knows to pick up slack.” It’s obvious, and she’s only caught a handful of games since she retired.

Joe shrugs, makes it look easy and unimportant. “It’s not just that, though. Everyone _respected_ Adam . . .”

“Of course they respect him, he was captain.”

Joe shrugs, in a way that looks very much like _you weren’t here_ , even though he doesn’t go so far as to say it. “Not every captain deserves to be respected.”

She switches tactics. “How easy would you work with your ex?” This is a point she feels cannot possibly be stressed enough, for all that Joe is treating it like some sort of minor inconvenience, instead of the truly terrible idea it really is. She’s come to peace with the fact that she might not be as over her marriage as she had previously thought, but playing that storyline out in front of the team and staff is a lot different than coming to that realization within herself. There aren’t shots to help her on the bench.

Joe gives her an angelic smile; it’s not hard to remember that he married his high school sweetheart, the Boy Scout. “I trust you can handle it.”

“ _Joe_.” She is not being stubborn, and there is not a dangerous edge to the tone of her voice, because she refuses to acknowledge either of those two things.

“He would be great at it.”

“I know.” It feels like a painful concession.

Joe has steel in his spine; someday it will very likely come to him to let her go. “I will always make the best choices for the team.”

“I _know_.”

Joe’s palms are flat on the table, as though he’s awaiting a game of roulette. “Patrice, I respect that you know your staff. But I don’t know most of these guys from Job, and I’d personally feel a little better with a familiar presence working back there. I really want you to consider it. Adam is one of the best people we could have, from any league. It’d be a mistake to pass him up because of personal bias.”

And that’s the problem, Adam would do the shit out of that job, no question about it. At this point, pride is a more immediate factor in her decision making than logic, pride and _fear_ , and it’s not betrayal and it’s not Joe choosing sides but damned if she can convince her instincts of that. She comes back at him with the same will, and her reaction to intimidation is always to face it with stubborn defiance, but Joe is _Joe_. He’s quiet, shy in a way that she can’t empathize with, and where she approaches an argument with bluster and fists Joe has always had a silent, tensile strength.

Patrice stopped thinking of Joe as a pushover _years_ ago.

She groans, nails scratching at her palm. “Joe, this is the _worst_ idea you could have, what is gonna convince you of that?”

“Is that logic or your pride talking?”

She scowls. “With all respect, _shut up_.”

He studies her for several seconds, gauging her like he’s searching out a hole in her guard. Her fists ball and her heart rate picks up, skin warming, and she tamps it down because she has to, because it’s _Joe_ , and because getting fired right now would be extremely inconvenient. She can’t fully remember leaning forward but there she is, dangerously close to Joe’s space, and he’s watching her with the sort of respectful curiosity he normally reserved for rival captains who wanted to go with him. A look of polite incomprehension that could suck the fight out of anyone.

The downside with that approach, the obvious one, is that Joe has only once lifted his fists on the ice, and he won that fight with brutal efficiency. He knows exactly what buttons to push, because pulling rank would never work. “You think you can’t handle it?”

“. . .”

That same little smile is there, too polite to be a smirk but skirting the knife’s edge.

“He cannot travel with the team. He hasta be home with the boys when I’m gone.”

“Of course,” he purrs, all understanding and compassion. “I can’t imagine he would want to, with the new school year starting.”

She has no way . . . the recognition is still fragile inside herself, something that’s been barely realized, and there’s no way to pull it out and examine it with company. Joe’s already confused, and she’s confused, and it’s impossible to explain the chain of events that lead to this being the worst decision in the organization’s recent history of terrible ideas, not without admitting to Joe something that she’s barely starting to accept inside herself.

Like that she’s still in love with her fucking ex-husband.

They don’t talk about it the rest of the day – they don’t speak at all, the office locked in some sort of deep freezer that Patrice refuses to crack open and Joe knows to leave alone. They’re both alpha-dominant, it’s a hallmark of who they are, and Joe knows he’s won but he also knows not to press the issue further. When Patrice goes home she accidentally makes more dinner than she needs with Jonathan and Callan at Adam’s, freezes the remainder, and eats while watching something trashy on Netflix. Adam doesn’t call, and she doesn’t call, and it’s good because there’s nothing for the two of them to discuss.

They’ve always worked best in silence, sensing each other’s moves and motives without words to trip them up.

Patrice is at her desk by seven, studiously ignoring the organizational email Joe sent out to welcome Adam to the staff in a developmental role. She keeps casting her eyes at it and glaring, waiting for it to wilt under her gaze. Joe finally pops into her office – her space, with her photos and her mementos – and takes a seat on the guest chair without complaint. He hands her a cup of overpriced coffee, one cream and scalding hot, which is as close as he'll come to a peace offering.

“Adam agreed to not travel for the time being. He says he’d rather it be that way.”

“I won’t let my personal feelings get in the way of the job.” She takes a drink of the coffee, which is as close as she’ll get to apologizing. “I know better.”

Joe might as well have not heard her. But coming from him it’s far from the deaf ear she grew used to having turned her way – he’s giving her, and her pride, an out. “I have scouting reports for whenever you’re ready for them.”

Joe was an amazing captain, someone Patrice still considers herself blessed to have played with, and there’s no reason to think having him as a boss will be all that different. She tilts her screen towards him. “Might as well go over them now, since you’re here.”

He scoots closer to see.

Joe will always be their stalwart captain, somewhere inside, just like Patrice will always be the unpredictable goalie, so they have to find a way to work that into the framework of business associates, which has more trip hazards than being friends.

Patrice eases back into her chair, cracks her neck and pulls her notes out of the drawer. It’s not the easiest peace they’ve ever reached but it will work, if they give it time.

\\\

When Joe goes out and gets her Alex Tanguay in a trade a week later Patrice can’t help but feel he’s trying to make some sort of apology, though damned if she knows what she should make of it.

\\\

Prudential Center is worryingly familiar; it feels the same as the last time Patrice played here, except now the ice surface is taken up with chairs and tables, command centers for the various executives who’ve come to make their selections. It seems like it should be different, but everything feels like memory.

And the kids, those are different. They all look so much _younger_ than she remembers them being. All those kids lined up in the stands, nervous as horses, waiting for their names to be called and probably sick and shaking. The possibilities – they’re almost overwhelming, all those futures.

The best that could be said of the Avalanche’s preceding season is that it was a half-hearted effort. There’s a lot worse that could be said. But right now it almost feels like it was worth it, in a way. There are command centers that are scrambling, racing their way towards zero-hour deals, teams that’re betting the future of the franchise on a pick or two.

Patrice and Joe have had offers. Not enough, never enough to part with the first over all, and Joe had declined with the grace of an executive who is not a gambling man. Nathan’s their kid. Patrice has seen him, up close and from behind the bench, and she can recite his stats in the games without a hitch, starting with the impressive ones and flowing up to the ones that seem downright implausible. The kid has a gift, one of the rare ones, and whether he goes first or last he’s still going to grow into the sort of talent franchises are built on. Joe’s carried that responsibility before and he knows what it looks like. Nathan has _it_.

She’d lobbied for him from the beginning – the possibility of holding his contract in the Q had slipped through her fingers, too much for the Remparts to give up for the contract of one kid, even if he was the Kid Dynamite, and she remembers watching from the bench as he’d absolutely _smoked_ the Remparts in the playoffs, playing them like she actually _had_ traded away her entire defensive corps, except without anything at all to show for it. Nathan had the sort of skill that was almost impossible to actually plan against. She’d wanted Nathan from the beginning, had waged an offensive against Joe and Josh for that pick, and surprising not even herself she had _won_ , she had what she wanted.

“Any bets on how many of these kids puked before coming over?” Joe asks, leaning back so he can whisper in her ear.

Patrice scans the room, then shrugs. She can almost _feel_ the desperate prayers of some of the kids, heavy on her spine. “Four or five,” said in the same soft deadpan.

Joe laughs, settling back into his seat, scanning the room again. “Oh, to be eighteen and nervous again.”

She shrugs. There was no such thing as drafting a female player back when she was eighteen; this atmosphere is as foreign as it would be on Mars, and almost as impossible to breathe through. She can appreciate the nerves that are surely eating their way through the seated prospects, but she has no real concept of what it’s like. All she has are her own nerves, which are generally focused on not tripping on her way up to the dais.

Patrice has had thoughts, over the years. Watching drafts, as a player and then as a coach, watching kids she mentored bouncing from their seats and racing down the stairs to accept their jerseys. Hell, she has a shameful amount of thoughts about what it’ll be like to see her _sons_ up there someday.

Not too soon, though.

Sometimes she wonders, if the universe had dealt a different hand, where all of this would have played out for her. The pick order, when she would have heard her name, day one or day two, the feeling of being _wanted_ at an age when she’d barely managed to beg, borrow, or steal ten hours of ice time a week in the shitty neighborhood setup back home. Sitting somewhere up there with her maman on one side, papa on the other (even then they would have needed that separation to maintain civility) and maybe Stéphane and Alexandre in the crowd behind them. Her suit freshly pressed and hair slicked back from her face, sitting and waiting on the edge of her seat for her name to be called.

Probably not by Quebec, though. That year . . . yes, mostly skaters — _Mcrae, Routhier, Guerard,_ her memory supplies — they hadn’t been in the market for a serious goalie until just before the lockout. _Thibault in . . . 1993, their pick from the Philly trade, 10th overall and dealt to Montreal when it became clear she and Fiset would be the choices_. Most likely she’d have ended up in Washington, probably never would have met Adam, at least not in the way she did, which means no Jonathan, no Callan.

In the end everything’s bullshit except for where she is right now, but the thoughts spring up despite her best efforts.

They get the signal they’re on the clock, and Joe leans over again. “Second thoughts?”

Emphatic, “no.”

“Same here. Show time,” Joe mumbles. His voice goes from cool confidence straight to sounding abjectly miserable as he pushes to his feet. “I hate these parts.”

He must catch the tail end of Patrice’s ‘what the hell?’ look, because it draws a sheepish little shrug out of him. “The center of attention parts.”

The parts with the cameras and the TV crews and the stage. The ones that seem intrinsically part of being President of Operations. “Remind me again why they give you the job?” she jokes, too low for the microphones to pick up, even as many of them as there are. The air is thick with them, the low volume thrum of their attention.

Joe laughs, shaking his head as she follows him to the edge of the stage. “Because I’m a beauty at all the other parts.”

She eyes his spine, wishing he could see her face in that moment. She settles for mumbling “suuuuure,” soft and under her breath, checking him high on the side with her hip.

Joe doesn’t stumble, still solid as a rock, and he doesn’t offer her his hand like he thinks she can’t make it up the stairs, not even when the Jersey crowd welcomes her back with a “Marty’s better” chant that gradually picks up steam.

Patrice flashes the crowd a brilliant smile, arms coming up with purpose. Unfortunately, Joe knows her very, very well. “If you flip them off there will be _words_.”

It’s impressive how much threat he can manage without even moving his lips. “Not planning on it.” She grins, schoolgirl charming, as Joe dumps the jersey and hat into her upraised arms.

“Suuuuuure,” he hisses back, unfolding their pick from his jacket. And then he’s Super Joe all over again, cool and confident and directed with _purpose_. There’s not a single hitch, the transformation as complete as the second his skates hit ice, back in the day.

This is their new arena, team sweaters and gloves traded for suits and handshakes, and Joe commands it exactly like he always has, with quiet confidence.

It _still_ makes her bluster seem pale in comparison.

Nathan’s beaming so wide his face looks like it might split in half, flushed a healthy pink, and he takes the stairs three at a time before he bounces up to Joe with a combination of reverence and pure, mind-numbing excitement. He’s a good kid, sweet and earnest and earnestly thrilled, and he mumbles “Thank you,” to Patrice when they hug, the fabric of his jersey scratching as she slaps his back. He sounds utterly awed.

That gratitude drowns out all of the chants the crowd could ever throw her way.

\\\

Sharing a room with anyone, let alone Joe, is an interesting experience. On the road it was always her, alone. Ownership at the time had no interest in fielding the PR circus of pairing Patrice off, at least not on record. Off the books she did what she wanted, slept with who she wanted and avoided those she didn’t (but never jeopardized the game; no, the game was above those petty little personal games). The team let her make her own calls, and after that she always had Adam and Joe behind her and smacking their metaphorical baseball bats into their hands if the point needed emphasizing. Once she’d gotten her shit together she’d roomed with Adam — off the record, Blakie or Martin slipping their key into her hand in exchange for her dealing with the snoring for the night — but never Joe.

He’s an inoffensive roommate, takes up a tiny corner of the sink with his toothbrush and razor, and lets her have the bed by the window and control of the remote. It’s weirdly reassuring to see that being front office hasn’t changed their style at all, two beds, a TV, and a shared bathroom without an excess of amenities. Joe’s down at the bar catching the end of the Rockies game so she can change, call up the boys and Skype away the loneliness that’s settled deep in her bones surrounded by so many teenagers.

Adam answers, his familiar face filling the screen and causing Patrice to bite her lip with enough force that it stings when she releases it. “Hey, Patrice. It’ll be a sec, the guys are putting the hurt on their dinner.”

“You aren’t?” She still has vivid memories of how much Adam could pack away when he really got his eating groove on.

He shrugs, smiles a little ruefully and pats at his stomach. “No more Footer Sandwiches for me. Amazing what not having regular skates does to you.”

Under the shirt it’s impossible to tell if the belly he’s alluding to is reality or perception, but the gesture hits her with a sudden, sharp burn of _want_. Her fingers twitch with repressed motion as she aborts the gesture to reach for him, the desire to touch.

She blinks, looks away and takes one breath that she needs, desperately.

These new developments are getting genuinely worrying.

“Yeah,” Patrice decides, finally vocalizing _something_. “But you’re gonna be getting going soon.”

It’s the first acknowledgement of his new job and hell, Patrice knows she can handle it. Just like she knows she probably couldn’t if Adam was anything other than part time, anything other than her _assistant_ in development. She’s not ready for him to be a partner, not until her emotions are under something resembling her control. Still, there’s no reason to avoid the mess because she can handle it, she _has_ to handle it, and also _fuck you, feelings_ , in descending orders of priority.

She can handle this, is the point.

“What are the plans for tomorrow?”

It’s a good thing for Adam to ask, it’s safe, because work is safe. “Joe gave Greg Sherman the spread sheet,” which has been updated for all contingencies, all possible scenarios and eventualities so that his backups have backups, because he’s _Joe_ , “but we like what is coming up and want some more like Siemens. Bigras, I think.”

He nods, already thinking about training camp and working with those players, probably. It’s his thoughtful, speculative face at any rate.

Patrice is settled in to wait for the boys to finish their supper, mind beginning to wander randomly through everything that’s needed. Adam asking “and how are you?” seems more like an attempt to avoid dead air, but still comes out as a sincere enquiry.

“Jersey sucks.” She’s a little shocked at her own vehemence.

“Yeah, we were watching.” He offers her a crooked smile to match the nose, offhandedly charming. “Jonny said he was gonna kick the shit out of them, y’know.”

It should probably bother her that they saw that messy attempt at humiliation, but Jonathan’s a hockey player’s son. He’s already had three fights on the playground _that she knows of_ , and has tried to clumsily cover up at least another two. Normally it comes down to some classmate who didn’t have the sense to not repeat something his parents said. “Oh boy,” she mumbles, embarrassed in that strange parental way that registers as pride. Jonathan is entirely too much like her, and that worries her sometimes.

Adam’s full on grinning; he gets it. “He got a language lecture. In front of Callan”

_That’s_ gonna hit him where it hurts. “Good call.”

It’s a split second; Patrice feels a grin creeping over her face, sees Adam smiling back, and it’s same old-same old. Patrice makes a save, Adam recovers and clears and it’s easy as pie, thoughtlessly responding in a way that best helps the other. It hadn’t always worked that way in the marriage, which was always the hardest part. But right then it happens, and it’s beautiful, and it _hurts_.

Patrice darts her eyes away again, more to escape the answering melancholia in Adam’s eyes than anything, hiding like she’s _afraid_ of what she’ll see there, when in reality she’s worried she won’t see anything at all.

The moment slips away before she can really say anything about it, and then the boys are there, crowding the screen and jostling. Callan looks thrilled, and Jonathan looks sheepish, so she decides not to mention the punishment.

She has two brothers; the politics of punishment are far more complex than even parents would guess.

“Maman, Jonathan –”

“What do you think of our pick?”

That derails them both for the statistically important millisecond it takes to wipe tattling from the board.

“I like him,” Jonathan says loyally, hackles coming down. “I remember, you wanted to sign him.”

“Papa still thought you were gonna take Jones.”

“Joe is a misinformation _master_.” Adam looks indignant, or at least as indignant as he can when the accusation is coming from an eight-year-old. “MacKinnon was the right choice, especially for this team.”

Jonathan and Callan decide the conversation is boring at the same second, launching into whatever is on their minds because shop talk is the _actual worst, maman_.

Callan’s telling her about lacrosse, his eyes huge like dinner plates.

“And then they got a penalty so we got to play man up because Tommy’s stick got grabbed and we had, like, six shots and I almost scored twice and it was so cool maman, I wish you coulda seen it!”

She can’t stop smiling. “I’ll see you play next week.”

And Patrice misses them. It’s not a shock, not anymore, the intensity and depth of it, but it’s never easy to accept, either way.

Patrice loses herself in Jonathan and Callan’s world, soaks it in and uses it to close the distance between them. She hears the door click open a little before eleven, Joe shuffling in and tossing his wallet on the table, stripping off his tie and laying it on the dresser. It feels largely irrelevant.

“Hey, guys,” he offers with a weary smile. Jonathan calls out a cheery hello while Callan waves, a little shyly. It’s adorable. Adam lets out a low, strange growl, which is decidedly less so.

“Patty, I’m headed to bed.” Joe claps her shoulder on his way past. “More work tomorrow.” And then he collapses onto the bed face first, huffing out a sigh of exhaustion. He’s still in his undershirt and slacks.

Apparently the day was more stressful for him than he let on.

Technically it’s creeping up on bedtime for Callan, at least. Summer can excuse some laxity, but exceptions can be a slippery slope with him.

They each offer her a kiss across the connection, and Adam closes the call without anything more than a small smile.

It makes Patrice miss the days when they’d kiss good night, fills her with a fierce possessiveness that she has no right to, anymore.

It sits in her chest like regret when she tries to sleep.

\\\

“I really had no idea if you would take the job or not.”

Patrice stops picking at her meal and looks at Joe, one eyebrow going up. She’s known him for years, and Joe is always _Joe_ , but she’s never really heard him express uncertainty, even in private. She settles for “Really?”

Joe shrugs, eats a couple of fries while he waits for her to have an actual reaction. “Yeah. After all, it meant coming back here, and with Adam —”

“ _What about Adam_.” A part of her is still smarting, the pride part, and she’s not about to play along.

“Well, with the way the two of you turned out.” Joe’s talking like he’s never heard of divorce, or seen it first hand, like it’s something he needs to tip toe around and not something that happens every single day.

“You have a point?”

Joe seems to be taking in her posture, and hopefully also the sullen look she’s sending him, and transitions from deferential to demanding so quickly her head spins. “What the hell, Patty?”

“Hey, hey!” Her hands go up, and it’s only Joe’s thin smile that keeps her from getting more defensive. “You are nosing in.”

“I’m _curious_ ,” he corrects, utterly inoffensive like Joe always is. He props his chin in his hand, waiting her out.

This is a game Patrice isn’t sure she wants to play; there’s no clear winner on the horizon, and she _hates_ that. “And you are not captain anymore. You aren’t gonna get into my personal life now.” She’s trying to make it into a joke and only partially succeeding.

“I need to know you can work with him. I could argue that it’s a legitimate professional interest.”

“An you being nosey.”

“Maybe a little nosey. And being your friend.” He settles back in that way that tells her he’s in it for the long haul. Joe’s always been endlessly patient, whether it was looking for the perfect opportunity on a shot or now, waiting out a terrible season before stepping in. He can settle in and wait for an eternity if he wants to, and he’s absolutely going to dog her about this. She can tell.

Patrice breaks first. “Is just about _time_ , Joe. About me, just . . .” She waves her hands around for a second while she tries to glove the words out of thin air. “Columbus is . . . it was not gonna be enough, an Adam was happy cause he had the team. But after I retired I had nothing, an –”

She hesitates, because it’s always simpler and more difficult than it sounds. “Things change, I suppose. People. He signs with Columbus an I am in a new city, an Columbus wants me to be the captain’s wife. The ladies there, they were not as welcoming there, never knew what to do with me like they did here. I retired, but that doesn’t mean I wanna _give up_ hockey to be their attraction.”

“So you left?”

Joe isn’t saying anything she hasn’t heard, hasn’t told herself in the dead of night when the darkness forces the truth out of her. That doesn’t mean she’s any less annoyed about needing to examine it. “So I went back _home_ , where I had a team waiting. Where I could have hockey, because hockey is what I am.” She shrugs, the motion small and even a little defeated. “Things just . . . got harder after that.”

“And you _gave up_?” His tone makes it clear how unbelievable he finds that, and she winces through the implication, the unspoken ‘quitter’ that seems to hang there. “I know you, Patrice. You don’t give up, you dig in.”

She sighs, and prays that the defeated line of her shoulders is enough to end this conversation before it starts to _really_ hurt. “Real life, Joe. It’s not like a game, sometimes.”

He leans back in his seat, and she takes a handful of fries off his plate in revenge. Joe slaps halfheartedly at her wrist while she munches. “It’s impossible to give it up, isn’t it?”

It’s as close as she’ll get to acceptance from Joe; she’ll take it.

\\\

Patrice might still be in love with Adam, but the bright side is that nothing about their lives or the team changes, because at least she’s wise enough to realize it’s not going to result in anything else changing. The kids still have games and distractions, and they both still attend because there’s nothing in hell or Denver that’ll keep her away, not even something as squishy and complicated as feelings.

Kid’s sporting events are always interesting, from year to year. They start off swarming the ball (or puck) in exuberance, a mass of arms and legs that has very little direction or strategy beyond ‘be where the ball is’. Then each year it gets a little better; more and more of the kids start to really focus on the rules, the game plan, playing their position even if they’re not able to be right on top of the action. Penalties start meaning something, and winning suddenly takes on a significance that it didn’t before.

It’s pretty amazing to watch, seeing the change from year to year, and Patrice can see why Joe and Adam both love coaching their kids so much. Patrice is a little too focused on winning to handle this age.

The sun in Denver is warm, not as oppressive as it is in Florida but _stronger_ somehow, so much closer. Her Avs cap is pulled down to protect the tips of her ears from burning and she’s watching Callan out on the field, his lacrosse stick clenched in his hands and a look of absolute concentration on his face. He’s always been better at the concept of sports than other kids his age; comes from growing up where he did.

The game’s not instinctive yet, but it’s getting there. Callan’s gone from ‘at least he’s having fun’ to a legitimate threat on the field. He’s also got a competitive streak a mile wide and Adam’s eyes but her nose (thank god).

“He’s a good scorer. Your son.” Aiden’s mom gestures to the field with her chin. _Beth_ , Patrice’s mind supplies. _Inventory supervisor._

“Thanks. I dunno where he get it from.” She means it as a joke but it goes a little overhead.

“Neither one of us were known for our points totals,” Adam supplies, leaning across her. They’re sitting side-by-side but apart, no portion of their bodies touching even by accident.

Patrice braces her arms on the empty bleacher behind her, taking some of that sun into her chest. “Some of us were busy in the net.”

“Never stopped Marty.”

Beth laughs, a soft and almost polite sound, which is pretty much all that saves Adam from a junk punch. “Adam says you just moved back to Denver. Congrats on the job.”

“I am excited to really get started.” When actually she’s pondering what else Adam may have said. “It’ll be tough, but we gonna get it done.”

“No offense, but you sucked last year.”

“Last year is not my problem, so I’m not mad.” She grins back, all teeth.

“Where’s Jonny?” Adam draws Patrice’s attention back by knocking their knees, jostling her and earning an elbow for his trouble. “I haven’t seen him in a bit.”

Patrice can always find her son. She rolls her eyes over towards the far edge of the park, where Jonathan’s found friends and is racing around in some amalgam of tag and race. Callan is younger but he’s more purely a jock; Jonathan tends towards introspective and is perfectly content to let hockey be his sport of choice. “He’s fine,” she notes before going back to watching the game.

It takes her what feels like several crucial hours to realize that Adam’s knee is still pressed up against hers, skin sun warm and familiar. So familiar that its presence is almost not worth remarking upon.

At least that’s how Patrice justifies not pulling back, relaxing until they’re pressed together hip to knee and down to the ankle, both steadfastly refusing to acknowledge it for fear of breaking the fragile truce. It’s too warm by half in the sun, uncomfortable. She still doesn’t move, and after a while it starts to feel normal, nice. It’s not a thrill or a rush, it’s the sensation that things are working out correctly for once, and when Adam silently hands her his bottle she drinks it, like they used to do during games, before passing it back.

Callan comes out of the handshake line, jerking his helmet off. Adam hands him his bottle and ruffles the sweat-soaked hair until it stands straight up. Callan pops his mouth guard out and squirts straight into his mouth, just like the older players.

“Didja see my scoring chance, maman?” he asks, almost bouncing out of his skin.

“Of course _mon bebitte_.” Callan makes a face at her, but he wiggles onto the bench beside her while he drinks.

Adam points downfield. “Did you have a chance to talk to number ten?”

The boy looks beyond sad. He’s trying to hide it, but there are tears on his cheeks. Callan squints at the indicated player. “Oh! That’s Tommy. He’s . . . a little emotional right now.” He looks like a little sage when he imparts that wisdom, even as Patrice has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from bursting out laughing.

Adam transitions rapidly between amused to matching Callan seriousness for seriousness. “I remember now.”

“Okay, papa. Oh, gotta go!” He bounces out of the seat, setting his bottle down and leaving his helmet with them before jogging over to his coach, gesturing for post game meeting.

It’s the end of the game that forces them to tip their hands, pulling apart even as sweat tries to stick their skin together uncomfortably. _That_ feels entirely too intimate, like the morning after a damn good night, and Patrice shivers as she wipes the excess moisture off her leg with one hand. Adam shows no outward sign of anything out of the ordinary, just a red mark on his leg from the heat and pressure.

She wasn’t aware she had been leaning on him that hard.

\\\

**September**

\\\

Patrice has no reason to believe anyone on the Avalanche will be anything other than a consummate professional, but the last thing she wants to deal with her rookie year is fielding a team coated with hero-worship or, worse, a vague sense of distrust. With the Remparts she’d been partners with them from beginning, and there’s even less reason to change that when her team isn’t a bunch of kids, has plenty of upcoming superstars in their own right.

Her time in Quebec had seen her switching hats between coach, confessor, and substitute maternal figure, and because of that Patrice has made a point of being approachable, trying to nip any hero-worship off at the pass so she can do her damn job.

Patrice makes a point of having private consultations with every member of the team that was still in Denver, offering them her support and a chance to have their say. Stastny was understandably cautious during their meeting, edging into the conversation like an injured animal, hopeful but uncertain. She’s got a good presence, relaxed and secure, which is exactly what Patrice will be feeding when the season comes, when Pauley steps onto the ice, and there’s hope there. Landeskog is exactly what Patrice expected, dedicated and almost frighteningly perceptive, older than his years. It’s clear that Sacco initially chose him as a media ploy, but Gabe seems to have come out of it on top. He gives his opinions on the team freely and she takes everything he says under immediate advisement, respecting his input. Giguere she knows rather well; she remembers meeting him when he was young, handing him her game stick, and there’s an easy familiarity when he sheepishly tells her he slept with that stick, dreaming about someday making a start like she had. McLeod is _Adam_ , through and through, and they connect so quickly her head spins, that easy familiarity that feels like déjà-vu.

In the end she has their support and understanding, which is a step towards securing the rest of the dressing room through them.

Erik Johnson is an interesting case. She’s spent the better part of the day she’s set to meet with him in her office with Adam, adjusting her notes and grilling him, and she’s no closer to comprehending exactly what it is she needs to do for him.

Adam shrugs. “Sacco didn’t make it easy on any of the guys. EJ’s one of the more obvious kinks in the system he used.”

“ _Fuck_ his system,” Patrice mutters, head in hand. “All this cleanup before the season _starts_. . .” She raises her head, the obvious solution suddenly crisp and bright in her mind. She sounds like a gleeful child as she exclaims, “I’m gonna find him, and I’m gonna punch him!”

Adam’s smile is as lopsided as his nose, as imperfectly perfect, and she resists touching by focusing on the cleansing effects of her irritation. “Not really helping, Patty.”

“I would feel better,” she grumbles, but that’s her job. It’s part of why she’s here, and Joe made no qualms about it. She knows what it’s like to be everything from Coach to Confidant to Surrogate Mother, it’s an unwritten requirement of _raising_ a bunch of teenage hockey players. In Colorado that means there’s a lot of bad feelings she has to navigate before they even hit the ice, a lot of trust to rebuild.

“Not that any of the guys would protest. Hell, there’s a couple that might help you.”

It’s an idea, but . . .

Patrice shakes her head sadly. “No. I shouldn’t.”

Adam’s laugh catches her off guard, makes her jerk her head up from the paperwork to see him absolutely _cracking up_ on the other side of the desk. “When has ‘shouldn’t’ ever stopped you before?”

He doesn’t mean anything by it. It shouldn’t make her as angry as it does. “I promise Joe. I don’t break promises.”

The look on Adam’s face becomes worryingly difficult to read, shuttered off. “Ah, then. So, with Sacco Punching off the table, what’s left?”

“Damage control.” She grits her teeth, then asks for help the only way she knows how. “What do you know?”

Adam glances at her paperwork, scouting reports and assessments from her other assistants. Patrice waves his interest off, settles her hand on his arm and touches. Sometimes she just – needs to touch him. He relaxes into the contact after a second of painful uncertainty. “They have their chance. I wanna know what you think – I know how you think, an you have seen him closely.”

_I trust your instincts._

He sighs, focuses on the photos on her wall for a few moments while he thinks. She takes the time to stare at him in relative safety, the line of his jaw and the shadow of stubble. “From what I’ve seen . . .”

“Just say it, Adam.”

An edge of irritation crosses his face. “EJ isn’t in a vacuum. He knows the team gave up a lot for him, and he knows there were huge expectations when he came over. He knows a lot of people didn’t like the trade. I think he’s carrying all of that, and he’s taking losses personally, and he’s forgotten his game. He’s always been snide, but I think a lot of that is frustration that he can’t let out any other way.”

“That is none of his concern. He needs to focus on his game,” she concludes, leaning back in her chair.

“That’s the easy way of putting it. Harder to actually do.”

The plan’s already ticking through her head. “Still, that’s something I can start planning for. I know what it is like to be in that headspace.”

“EJ’s a good kid.” Adam sounds fiercely protective, sounds like a _defender_. It’s wonderful. “They’re _all_ good kids.”

She clasps his shoulder. “I know.” Unspoken _I’ll try to undo whatever Sacco did to them_.

\\\

“You’re not gonna bench us when we screw up, right?”

Matt Duchene is trying very, very hard for disgruntled and is coming across like a kicked puppy. Patrice pauses, sets François’ reports on Varlamov aside and considers him closely.

For all that he lived with Adam for a couple seasons, Patrice hasn’t had any lasting interactions with him. The kid’s a mixture of adolescent eagerness and something deeper lurking near the edges when she looks just right. Smart — extremely — but goofy enough that it could almost be forgotten. Her kids adore him, Adam accepts him as the oldest Foote, and he’s always been great with them, which predisposes her towards softness where he’s concerned.

He’s standing there, right outside the doorframe, and it takes her a moment to realize that it’s his way of deferring to her, coming at her with questions but lingering back so she can accept his interruption.

Like she thought. _Smart_.

“Come in, Matty.” The familiarity is a gamble, but he flashes her a little grin as he makes his way into the office. She stands to greet him, and then settles into one of her guest chairs. “You’re wondering about benching?”

“Yeah.” Matt drops into the other chair like his string’s been cut, all bravado dropped. He looks around, clearly curious, more interested than she’s used to from her players. Normally they sit and watch her, polite or curious, but Matt is taking in the whole room. His eyes flit around; her framed 2001 playoff jersey; the photo she keeps above her desk of herself, sixteen years younger and with blood pouring down her face from Vernon’s lucky punch; the stupidly ugly plant her maman gave her for good luck that first season up in Quebec that she stubbornly keeps alive just to prove she can. Charlotte, held behind glass now that she’s earned her retirement, displayed in a place of honor on the bookshelf.

It’s strange to not be the most interesting thing in the room.

“It’s just . . .” Matt hesitates, visibly struggling for the best way to say a bad thing. He keeps playing with his hands, displacing himself through them. “Coach Sacco had this thing, I guess. He used to bench us all the time. If we played bad, or he didn’t like what he saw or something. Sometimes it didn’t make sense anyway.”

Matt’s doing his best to not call out Sacco, a restraint Patrice can’t help but appreciate, a sort of distant respect that Sacco probably didn’t deserve. Patrice has Matt’s stats; she’s seen the drop in production he struggled through the past couple years, the games he sat out as a result. He’s far from a unique case on the Avs; she’s seen the self-perpetuating cycle, which is more than she can say for Sacco, and he was actually _in the room_ at the time. Wasting a talent like that, stifling it, just because it didn’t bend into the system was like slaughtering Secretariat, as far as she is concerned. It’s stupidly backward, and Sacco deserves all the fallout that he got.

Matt suffered some of the worst of that, and he still shows the scars in the way he slumps, the anxious set of his lips. She almost wants to _hug_ him or something.

“I really hated it,” Matt says softly, his head down with the shame saying those words brings out in him. It sounds an awful lot like Matt is saying _I hated him_ and he looks guilty as hell for even thinking that.

He’s a _damned good kid_.

“I don’t blame you.”

He darts his head up, so fast Patrice worries about whiplash. “An I can’t give you absolution, but I can say I understand. He stifle you; he stifle all of you, an then expect you to succeed anyway. I believe athletes need to be strong, mentally. Making them sit out games only hurts them; they need to learn and to play through slumps. Embarrassment, I think, is a bad tool.”

Matt watches her with wary eyes until they light up, catching her train of thought and hopping on. “You mean like you, when you were in Fredericton?”

She smiles, thin and tight, still a memory that rankles her. Not everyone would catch that, but Patrice knows about Matt’s interest in her, and her gamble plays off in recognition. “If you want to compare, yes. I don’t want to play my best after that. Probably I couldn’t, even if I want to. Bordeleau wasn’t so different from Sacco, yes?”

“Half the time I didn’t even know what he thought I did wrong,” Matt mumbles, hand twitching with the desire to ball up a fist.

Patrice had this all planned out; she was going to start training camp with a meeting to lay it all out. She’s a different coach, she has different ideas and they need to know exactly what she expects from them. But Matt is here right now, and he needs something from her.

She touches his arm, light enough he can shrug her off. “I have play under those systems, an I know how they fail the players. If I have a problem with how you play, I will say so. Not on the bench, with everyone, but in the office. I will tell you to correct it, an try to give you what you need to do that. If you don’t get it fixed, you are benched. I _will_ be hard on you. But I do not play games, Matt. I am honest with you, an I expect the same. You must come to me, if there are problems.”

The fidgeting, the slight movements of repressed anxiety, slowly ticked away while she was speaking. Matt relaxes, his face smoothing and calming, that bright and eager little smile starting to light up his face. He looks _excited_ , looks like the guy she knows instead of this strange, hesitant kid, and it builds a warm pride in her chest. “I’m excited about the season, Matty, and I want the team to be excited as well. If we all work hard an respect each other, we will win championships together.”

Matt has a brilliant smile when it’s sincere, and he looks as happy as she’s ever seen him, good game afterglow.

She can see it in his eyes; Matt’s loyal, all the way to the death, and once she earns it all she has to do is show him where to go and turn him loose to see her faith in him rewarded in the best way, goals and assists and _victory_.

She allows herself a maternal reaction, just for a second, as she clasps his shoulder with a warm hand. “You’re a good kid, Matt. You always been real sweet with my kids, an I appreciate that. An you’re a damn fine forward, one of the best. I will do right by the team, an by you.”

He looks almost shy with the praise. “Thanks, Coach Roy.”

Oh, hell. “Call me Patty.”

\\\

Patrice doesn’t carry a whistle on the ice. She doesn’t need to. She braces her tongue to her teeth and _blows_ , a skill Stéphane taught her as a kid like any good older brother should, a sharp burst that quiets the team instantly and calls dogs in from two miles out.

“Awright,” she barks, leaning on her stick and switching her eyes over the whole team. “Welcome. For those who are here before, things will be different. If you are new, things will be very different.” She offers them a flash of teeth. “I am Patrice Roy. I am your head coach. You don’t hafta call me coach; I am here to be a partner an I am in this with all of you. My door, you say, is always gonna be open.

“Some of you have not have good years. I want you to forget that. Last year does not matter, ‘cause I believe in you right now. You are all hockey players; any of you can be roster if you play good an we like what we see this year. If I see problems, you will correct them. If you see problems you will come an talk to me, or any of my coaches. I am not perfect, no person is. Hockey is a game of mistake, an I make mistakes too. What defines us is how we are gonna fix them.”

The team nods down the line, eyes focused, and she gestures with her stick. “Tim Army. Andre Tourigny. François Allaire. Dean Chynoweth. They say what I say; listen to them. Adam Foote will be working with us for training camp. Those of you who play for the Monsters, Dean tells you the same things; everything is the same, top down.”

Patrice is already bored with listening to herself. “Okay, good. This session is watch an learn. Adam, please.”

She doesn’t wait for them to jump the boards; she takes off and expects them to follow her down the ice.

They do.

The team clusters, Adam steps into defense, and Patrice centers herself as the offense.

“Right now, the plan is to work on D-zone coverage. Last year the coverage, especially with our second defenseman in front of the net, was not what we like to see.

“There are three areas that I think are dangerous.” She gestures as she goes, and Adam slips into position to demonstrate, slapping shots into the net with a crack of his stick. It’s a powerful sound, has some of the youngest players staring, and it gives Patrice a hot shiver down the spine that nestles low in her gut, makes her shift in an effort to ease the sudden shot of arousal. “There’s the slot area. Then behind the net an the point shot. We wanna protect our slot. We want the forward to be closer to the weak side defenseman, an then we will cover very well, the slot area.”

They go through the positions and plays, working side by side, filling in for each other, and there’s at least two times where Adam steps in, not to translate but with his own take on the teaching. Patrice listens to him, adds on, and hell. They’re doing it. They’re working like partners, like they always did back in the playing days, and before long everything is instinctive. Adam hasn’t played in front of her for ten years; Patrice hasn’t been a forward since she was a teenager, but somehow it _works_. They’re back to sensing each other’s presence, taking their positions and it feels kinda perfect.

After the demonstration of the first few plays they slip aside and let the first round of players take up position. She trusts Adam to do his job, tapping at the players, correcting, while she does her work with a separate set.

“It’s good. You have good rapport with Elliot.” She praises like a promise, directing Hunwick back into position. “Strong presence. But this, we need to have a different pace. EJ, Holden. Watch what we do, please.”

It’s a balance, support and correction, and she makes certain to include the whole team without directly betraying who made the error. She told Matt, and more importantly she _believes_ , that pointing out errors to shame the player does nothing but give her a room full of shameful players.

Adam works with her on passing lanes, keeping their sticks into the proper position to intercept a sloppy pass, force a turnover, and the team trails after them, watching and studying.

They spend the first day like that, watching to learn, and Patrice sets them through their paces with Adam’s help. Adam, for his part, is nothing but polite, is _deferential_ , never questioning her process or the methods. He’s respectful in a way that she appreciates; it makes it that much easier to work with the team when there’s no one second guessing her, or inviting the team to. Matt and Pauley, Varly and Jiggy, Gabe – they all buy in within the first hour, throw themselves into her system and then it’s smooth sailing after that, the rest of the team following in short order, everyone from the old timers like Van Der Gulik through to the first timers, like Holden.

The effort of winning them over, like a team of spooked horses, makes their trust in her that little bit sweeter. It’s far from the end; there will be struggles, there will be moments when they surge and moments when they crash, and they’ll look to Patrice to keep them level, keep the waves from overwhelming them. That’s the true test for her – not this training camp, but the season that will follow.

This is just a drop in the bucket, a little bit of trust from a team that doesn’t give their trust easily, but she can’t help but take it in hand like a victory. This, she feels, is the tipping point. Now she can focus on building them up.

\\\

The Burgundy and White game is an institution. They’ve all cycled through it, and it’s a bit of a relief to hand coaching over to someone else while she hangs out and enjoys the show. It’s her last shot at watching hockey for the sheer joy of it, before the new season makes it vital to note, review, and annotate _everything_.

That’s the theory, anyway. It’s what they were aiming for when her assistant coaches took command of the benches and dropped Patrice and the rest of the front office into the reserved seats high in the stands.

What actually happens is something entirely different.

“Did you notice the positioning across the neutral zone? We gotta tighten up the defensive coverage on odd man rushes.

“Varlamov is looking better; his positioning with his glove is helping.

“Does the line look right to you? Or would a shuffle increase production?”

Adam is watching her out of the corner of his eye, the rapid fire way she jots notes down as she watches. It’s entirely in Québécois initially; the ideas are flowing too quickly to catch otherwise.

Patrice is letting the assistant coaches do their job on the ice, but she’s endlessly fascinated by what they’re doing, how they fiddle with the players they have and who they send out when. Patrice intentionally divided the squads to separate their usual lines, force some changes in thinking and shake up any lingering Sacco-Effects. They’re experimenting with lines, with D pairings, with power play and penalty kill units, mixing it up and seeing what sticks. Sometimes it’s a stroke of genius from up here, and sometimes she can tell it’s gonna be a strange failure, if you could accuse skilled athletes of something like that. But it’s as close to a real world scenario as they can get, playing for bragging rights and a spot on the roster, so everything that’s done has the potential to shape into something important, something lasting.

Patrice doesn’t even register the frenetic edge until Adam taps her knee, pulls her attention away from a notebook that’s rapidly dissolving into a dark blur of play after play, layered over each other as they occur to her, line combos and strategy and PKs, all built up until they sorta swim and dissolve in her vision.

There’s always been an intensity to her observations, the barely controlled insanity that hockey brings out in her, and it’s not until Adam takes her pen that she recognizes the edge of it.

“God _dammit_ , Adam –”

He tilts his head toward hers, rests them together for a moment as he points away, down to the ice. “Look at the way Nate plays the corners.”

Her eyes flick to the rink without thinking about it, anger forgotten as Nathan battles it out in the corner, flicks a pass to Pauley, floating in front of the net. She fires an absolute _laser_ towards Pickard, lifting it enough to send it skipping over his pads.

Nate’s a center by nature, but he’s _learning_. There’s adaptability there, a willingness to go where he’s needed and adapt to Pauley’s slower, more deliberate style of puck handling, learning the position and reacting smoothly to the transitions.

Certainly a player of his caliber should be more than capable, but the flexibility is something different, and Patrice is deeply grateful for it.

There’s a difference to the game when she watches like this, pen still and storing the saves, point totals, goals, inside that place in her brain where she has every stat. Her memory for the game is hugely useful, she can’t shut it off any more than she can stop blinking, but there’s a beauty in sitting and watching it happen.

There’s a flow to the team that happens separate from even the most advanced algorithms. Out on the ice players feel each other out and _click_ , and there’s not a stat in the world that can explain how or why it happens.

Nate has an inherent confidence in Pauley and Gabe, and that trust makes him adaptable, willing to go out in front of the net knowing that they can find him. The play is different but he _trusts them_ and the gears for the whole team begin to grind into alignment.

She settles back into place, Adam’s hand still resting inoffensively on her forearm, and really watches the game.

“There,” Adam murmurs after a particularly good shift, Factor and Matt making clean passes, and EJ getting his stick into the passing lanes like Adam has been drilling him to do ad nauseam. His breath is warm against her skin, so close that it tickles the hairs against her neck, and his hand tightens excitedly against her arm, squeezing like he has a great surprise.

The surprise comes when she doesn’t pull away, leans into him a little and lets him direct her attention into the game, sharing observations and air between them.

There’s no burn in her chest, and no heavy weight between her shoulder blades, lingering like some sort of untapped potential. Hockey is a safe place for them, and she accepts it for what it is. She and Adam are sharing thoughts and observations, and it’s friendly and even _kind_ , it’s not a fight or a struggle.

It’s not the best game the Avalanche have ever played; it’s lack luster in the little details, but as a part of her big picture it all seems to be going according to plan. She ducks into the dressing room between periods, returns to her seat when they play, and stays close to Adam the whole time. She returns and he doesn’t pull away, just lets her sneak back into the portion of his space that she’s taken to occupying, temple to temple and sharing thoughts with an intimacy that shocks at her when she stops to consider it.

The peace is nice, it soothes some place inside of her that needs the balm, and so Patrice does everything she can to not draw attention, make it a forgivable thing that she can carry with her when she needs it. It’s selfish, but she can’t see the harm in the comfort it offers her.

It takes some time for the Cadet Ice Arena to thin out, and Patrice and Adam spend that time crowd watching and discussing the game. It feels normal, feels like the good old days when they would sit on the plane together, Patrice recapping the game from her extraordinary memory, going over losses and wins with a fine toothed comb, dissecting them as though they can reveal their secrets if she looks deep enough into them.

Adam was patient then, and he’s patient now, rolling the lines and plays through his brain and picking out moments — blocked shots, penalty kills, turnovers — that helped define how the game went, what they did well and what was a liability during a real game scenario. In the end there wasn’t a single stellar success, but she’d have to be short sighted to write the whole of the game off. There’s a lot that can be done with what she saw, a lot that can be built on, and damned if she’s not going to do just that.

Adam helps her think it out more than he can know in those quiet moments.

\\\

**October**

The sound that comes out of the Can when Patrice enters the bench is almost inhuman in its intensity, a fierce and feral roar, welcoming her home with an enthusiasm that leaves their cheers for the team in the dust. It lasts longer than she is comfortable with, blushing and trying not to look annoyed as she waves to them, heart high in her chest. It’s the biggest high Patrice can imagine, a flush covering her body and shivering down her spine. It’s a lot embarrassing, but in all honesty she’s missed them just as much, and hearing those cheers feels very much like another facet of coming home for her.

There’s one place where she’s always felt 100% comfortable and that’s here, the ice in front of her and the crowd roaring behind her. Patrice and Denver – there’s a love story there; it’s about fans who took her in without question and the hardware she fought to give back to them, because that’s the only way an athlete has to show gratitude.

Patrice tucks her hands into her slacks, ruining the immaculately tailored line but successfully hiding the tremor that runs through them.

Her team shows her their gratitude in another way, by opening up the scoring and never letting up, skating with their heads up and smothering the offense every time it gets a look at the net.

Anaheim is getting frustrated. The Avalanche are still carrying the weight of humiliation as far as the rest of the league is concerned, and it’s a source of confusion for the Ducks that the Avalanche suddenly aren’t playing like it. Nate is fitting in perfectly with Gabe and Pauley, not showing any of that wide-eyed awe that can strike the first time you play in an actual NHL game. Patrice sets out her lines, keeps an eye on who Boudreau sends out, and lets her team play the game the way she knows in her gut they’re capable of.

By the third period the Ducks are still shut out. Varly’s been standing on his head and he’s kept out everything they can throw at him. He’s playing like the puck is the size of a beach ball, with a confidence that looks surprisingly familiar to her.

François is a miracle worker, sent by God himself.

Everything in the game seems to be going perfectly for them, which of course is a good time for other things to go spectacularly sideways.

It starts with a defenseman, skating backward with his legs open and just right, pegging Nate and taking him down. Nate’s a first rounder, he plays with his head up and expects the odd run, first game in the League and he’s already prepared for that, but this is different. This isn’t a hit from behind.

The Kid winces, limps, and her heart goes straight to her throat where it lodges. His _knee_ , that went straight at Nate’s _knee_ and she howls for the ref, the linesman, who all look unsure, unable to make the penalty call that she definitively saw. Patrice thumps her fist into her hand, even as Nate gives her a sheepish grin, stretches his knee out.

“It’s fine,” he mumbles, limited range of motion exercises until he’s sure that there’s no pain.

“Doesn’t matter,” she hisses, leaning down to get a look at it herself. Matt — their trainer Matt — pushes her out of the way. “We can’t let them take a run at you like that.” It’s another facet of not being pushed around anymore.

The Ducks are downright _punchy_ after that, scrambling to break Varly’s streak, and when they send out their fourth line Patrice has a split second before she calls McLeod and his line out as well. It’s a calculated risk, sending her brawler line out when the hit and the score has the whole arena tensed for a fight. But she’s not putting Matt or Pauley’s line out with things the way they are.

At this point the brawl feels unavoidable. She might as well be prepared.

When it does hit it’s right in front of her bench, screaming and pushing and verbal filth, and then she sees Perry shoot his water bottle towards their bench like they don’t deserve his respect and that is _it_ , game fucking _on_.

“You don’t talk to my players!” Boudreau’s screaming, face red and pulsing when she comes out of her own anger enough to give a fuck that he’s there. “That’s fucking bush league!”

“Your players don’t fucking disrespect my team!” He’s hiding behind the stanchion, she can’t _reach him_ , so she takes it out on the glass, gratified to feel it wobble under her hands. “Or I will _fuck your shit up_ , motherfucker!”

She may or may not be screaming in Québécois; she can hear the team, catcalling and chirping, cheering her on, can see the way the bench is thinning out around the two coaches and _feels_ the pressure of their regard on her skin. In that moment the weight of responses hits her — she can back off and do the socially acceptable thing or she can do _this_ , and in a game of risk and reward the proper thing is very rarely the right thing.

It took a while; 45 years of fighting back and taking her lumps, speaking out and turning her cheek, to become the businesswoman that she is. But this is the _NHL_ , change comes slowly and with great struggle.

Fuck it. She has put in her time, and respect is gonna come one way or another. When she is at work she'll be treated with that respect one way or another.

_I can’t let them see me be bullied._

“You shouldn’t even _be_ here!” Boudreau snarls. “This shit belongs in the Minors!”

And with that Patrice shoves one last time, a snap of adrenaline and a grunt and then the glass is almost in Boudreau’s lap, inches from his face, and she’s still pushing, every iteration of that phrase throughout her whole _life_ lending her strength and motive. The color drains from Boudreau’s face when she makes eye contact, shoving further forward. “We are here! We’re not a fucking joke anymore!”

The crowd is losing their fucking _minds_ , louder than at her introduction, louder than the goals, deafeningly loud. Inside her head it’s quiet, a calm and peaceful place beyond the anger, where she observes and notes everything going on around her. Boudreau opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, his face embolism red and sweaty. Matty and a few of the guys are actually _laughing_ , hiding behind their gloves with their shoulders shaking, and Patrice can feel McLeod and Bordeleau at her back with balled up fists.

“You crazy bitch,” Boudreau finally manages.

Patrice takes that in hand as a victory, struts off into the dressing room with a swagger in her hips and the team at her heels. _Dammit_ , they’re going to get respect this year, if she has to fight alongside them every game of the season to get it.

She’s not hurt; Patrice moved past _hurt_ when she was shuttled to the triple C team when she had a better record than anyone else in her league, and she hasn’t cried over hockey since she won the Cup, but she _is_ angry, blood boiling hot to the surface and she throws her whiteboard against the floor to the cheers of the team and her assistants, stalking with restless rage as the players file in and drop into their stalls. Patrice can’t focus on them, all she can focus on is moving and fury and _red_.

“Patrice,” Andre murmurs, catching her shoulder in one bear paw of a hand and forcing her to slow down with his stillness. “Take a breather. We’ll handle this.”

It’s the permission she needs to hand her team off for that moment, let her assistants do their job while she stomps into the hall, pacing with her arms clasped tight behind her back. Her new heels make sounds like gunshots in the empty hallway.

“Patty?”

Intellectually she knows Adam is in the Can. He and Joe were in the box watching the game, and now he’s here with this _look_ on his face, every part of his body language radiating concern and _care_ , and the compassion on his face is enough to snap something deep inside her, her heart burning inside her chest. And that makes as much sense as anything as to why she backs Adam into the wall, hands fisted in his jacket and crowding into his space.

“He said I don’t belong here,” she growls, not the first time and probably not the last but she’s just so _tired_. She doesn’t want sympathy, so Adam matches her anger with certainty.

“He’s wrong.” Adam is always so _kind_ , off ice where his fists don’t count towards honor or revenge. Or maybe he’s just intimidated by the way she’s shaking his lapel like she wants to shake him apart.

Boudreau is an asshole and his team showed no class and Patrice is so tired of fighting this battle over and over again that she would burn civilization to the ground if it promised her a redo.

She drops her head to his shoulder, lets the adrenaline and fear hit her. Defending her team, scared for Nate, furious, _emotion_ , shaking through her muscles and leaving after images of rage on the inside of her eyelids. Adam is stroking at her back, the quiet sounds of his reassurance against her ear, and for a moment she lets herself feel that, too.

Kissing Adam hits her like a shock, hard and fast, brutal. She’s got a few inches on him in these heels and she takes advantage of it to hold him there. Patrice pours everything into it, six years of absence and the past three months of desperation, asking him to swallow it down with her, follow her down this rabbit hole of need and uncertainty and see where it goes. He makes a sound, startled and unsure, his hands fluttering around without a landing spot, when all she really wants is for him to hold on to her.

“Patty,” he murmurs, pulling away with a wet sound. She snarls, tries for him again because she _wants_ , it’s like a forest fire inside of her and threatening to turn everything into ash in its wake. If she wants to burn down everything and start over she’ll start here, with Adam, taking regrets and mistakes and laying the groundwork to rise above it. It’s overriding everything inside of her, and Adam _just keeps pulling away_.

“Adam.” Her voice sounds desperate, weak in the best ways and she fists in his tie, pulling him back to her. It’s a clash, played hard and fast, pressing closer until she’s sure she can hollow out a place and stay there, just hide for a moment until she has her head in place.

“Coach Roy?”

Fuck, _fuck_. She backs away from Adam, mouth red and eyes glittering, but at least she saves Nate the agony of finding his coaches making out in the hall. It would be like seeing his parents.

She’s tugging her suit jacket straight when Nate finally peeks out, every bit the cautious puppy he first struck her as. His face lights up with excitement. “The guys . . . I mean. The _team_ . . .” He trails off, baffled. “You’re okay, right?”

“I’m fine, Nate. Just. I had to cool it down.” Patrice sighs, rubbing at her hair, mussing it up and trying to _focus_ past the emotions bubbling and threatening to boil over. That nearly had. She turns to look at Adam, to dismiss him, and . . .

No.

No more running, not from this either. Not from doing the right thing, no matter how much it might cost her. He lets her take his hand, which feels like a victory in itself. “Adam, please? We can talk at home?”

He squeezes back, palm rough. “Sure, Patty.”

She really, really wants to kiss him. But there’s Nate in the hall and a group of confused hockey players in the locker room and that’s her first priority. Always. So she settles for shrugging at him, trying to project contrition in every aspect of her demeanor as she makes her way back to the room.

They start slapping her back the second she makes her way into the room, McLeod looks up from stripping his tape off and howls at her, eyes glittering with a fight. Nate hugs her like she imagines he hugs his mom, shy but fierce, and before long the team is clustered around her yelling and slapping and hand shaking and _smothering_ her under the weight of their regard.

“Fucking _badass_ , Patty!” EJ yells into her face, half deaf in his enthusiasm.

“Did you see their faces?”

“I thought Boudreau was gonna have a fucking heart attack when you went after him!”

“Dude, you _broke_ the _Can_!”

It’s amazing.

“You always _said_ you had our backs,” Dutchy murmurs in a moment of relative peace, while Varly is digging out an appropriately victorious song for the room with help from Gabe, Jan, and Pauley. “But you really stood up for us out there. And, just. Thanks.”

Patrice clasps his shoulder and Matt beams at her, eyes glittering with adrenaline and sheer, untempered _joy_.

“I believe in this team.” The room falls instantly, respectfully silent as she speaks, waiting to be filled. “If we play like we did tonight, I believe we win championships together. To do this, I need you to go out an fight like that for me _every single night_.”

Her heart feels like it might explode but there’s only pride, now. Patrice has fallen completely, irrevocably in love with this team.

“An if you fight like that for me, know that I will _always_ go to war for you.”

The room erupts with cheers, and shortly afterwards with something loud and poppy, and before long the team is moshing, shocking up and down around the A, and it doesn’t stop until the first reporters are released into the room.

\\\

Between working with the team, taking their temperature and the press conference — and seriously, Boudreau is such an _ass_ — it takes until well after midnight before Patrice makes it out of the Can.

She turns on her phone to see two messages from Manon. _???_ followed by _so much paperwork, Patrice_ and a string of Quebecois invectives that she’s pretty sure hockey’s golden girl shouldn’t know.

The boys are already in bed when she lets herself into Adam’s house with the key which is technically for emergencies, but she’s pretty sure this should count. She checks on them out of habit -- Jonathan cracks his eyes at the light, but he’s so out she doesn’t go in to him.

She chugs a glass of water in the kitchen, pours herself a few fingers of Adam’s scotch, chugs that, then pours herself another. After a few thoughts she pours one for Adam, to be fair, and makes her way to Adam’s study, kicking her heels off in the hallway.

The room feels the same, the pool table and the jerseys, the Olympic Gold she never got for herself and the Stanley Cup rings that they share, as real to them as wedding bands. It’s Adam’s room, the one he set aside for himself with his things and his interests, and it’s his place to retreat, so entering it of her own volition involves leaving her armor in the doorway while allowing him to shore up his own. It’s a display of vulnerability that breathes strangely to her, leaves her feeling stripped down and sacrificing her comfort for his.

Adam is in his chair, reading, but he sets the book aside the moment she hesitates in the doorway. He’s in sweat pants and an old t-shirt, small holes along the hemline and Sault Ste. Marie logo nearly faded out. He lets her scan the room without a word, then stands. He’s moving slowly, like with a skittish cat. “Hey, Patty. Come in.”

That cuts her strings and she stumbles into the room as if she drank a whole lot more than she did. “Fuck everything,” Patrice grumbles, padding over to Adam and handing him a glass. She settles on the pool table, leaning back against it, stripping off her suit jacket and setting it next to her. Then she starts laughing.

The laughter lasts a while. Adam just lets her go. There are tears in her eyes when she finishes, her chest so tight it feels like she’s run all over the world, and her muscles loose with relief as she slumps. “I just. He went _knee to knee_ with _Nate_. A defenseman who skates in that position, it’s dangerous. And then . . . What was I gonna do? He disrespect my players.”

“You did good,” Adam leans forward to touch her knee, emphasizing his assurance. “Even Joe said so.”

That actually means something. “Tomorrow we’ll see if he still says so.”

“He knew what he was getting into.” Adam shrugs, settling into her space. She doesn’t pull away. “It’s what the team needed to see to believe in you. And it’s what the NHL needed to see to know they can’t push the Avs around anymore.”

“I like to think our six goals talk for themselves.” She laughs, shaking her head. “I’m still gonna be in trouble.”

Adam opts for diplomacy. “If you weren’t Patrice Roy, I would have done it for you.”

She glares down into her glass. It never helps to remind her that being Patrice Roy carries a certain expectation of crazy, hot-headed aggression. She’s known Patrice longer than anyone, she _knows_ the expectations.

“That’s not what I meant.”

For a second she wonders if she said that out loud, when she’s certain that she didn’t. Adam never needed her to speak to understand her.

“I mean that I know you can take care of yourself. You wouldn’t need me to step in.” Because Adam knows her, too, knows the parts of her that she sometimes struggles to acknowledge, the fierce parts.

The scotch really is extremely good. “This is good scotch.”

Adam is fully in her space, natural in a way that doesn’t draw her attention to it at all, even after avoiding each other so long. It’s brief, such a simple comfort; he kisses gently at her neck, slides close and presses a ghost of a kiss against her lips, and that’s when the weight of the day hits and she _breaks_ , surges forward, catching him on the shoulder and holding him there. The scotch is good, it’s _good scotch_ , but she’s had good scotch plenty over the last six years and the taste of Adam is impossibly more interesting.

He grunts, leans into her in one smooth motion like _anticipation_ , guiding her down until she’s sprawling on the pool table, hands tangled in his hair and pulling him down. They pull apart, and she noses at his throat, nipping at the curve of his jaw and leaving a red mark on the skin.

Adam smells the _same_. That, more than anything, makes her tip her hand, legs spreading to accommodate his weight against her. Adam settles against her, raising himself above her and giving her room to slip her hands under his t-shirt, paper thin and worn against her fingers.

The skin of his belly is warm, softer than it was when he was playing, and Patrice can’t resist testing that softness with her fingertips, pressing and skimming. Adam rumbles, the sound deep inside his chest like a pleased cat, and she leans up to catch his lips, needing that contact. There’s a moment where the separation of the past couple years, the intensity with which she’s missed him, is soothed by the sensation of his body against hers, old familiar shapes and intriguing new ones. It feels peaceful and necessary, a relief so intense she can feel it in her bones, and then it fades back into the background.

Their sons are asleep only a few rooms away, and they haven’t actually fixed anything, and this is really another stupid decision in a string of stupid decisions she’s made where Adam is involved, and she swore she wouldn’t do that again.

No matter how pissed he’s gonna be, she’s gotta do the right thing. Because she has got this whole responsibility thing down pat, she’s going to leave.

Adam’s hand is warm on her stomach, scratchy with calluses, and she opens to him, sucking on his tongue.

Eventually. She’ll leave eventually.

It’s only after Adam gets her shirt unbuttoned, pushed off her shoulders, that it becomes real in an appreciable way. She pushes him away with a disappointed groan.

“Crisse,” she grunts, sitting up and making him scoot back. “Adam, we. Fuck, this is a terrible idea.”

Adam groans, a _painful_ sound, the outline of his erection clear against the thin fabric of his pants. “God fucking dammit, Patrice.” He drops his head to her belly, frustrated sound working out of his throat as he lets her go.

Recovering her clothes, tossing them over her arm as she flees, is one of the hardest things she’s done in a while.

\\\

It takes Adam a few minutes to join her in the kitchen. One way or another he’s taken care of his problem, and he looks fresh, if disgruntled, when he comes into the room.

Patrice’s drinking coffee. Her shirt is only thrown loosely over her, sloppily buttoned and half open.

Adam takes his time making a cup, blowing across it, before settling in across the table from her. He ends up waiting her out, staring across the rim of his cup.

Patrice sighs. She didn’t want to be the one to start this. Honor dictates that she has to be. “I’m sorry for that.”

“You have really got to make up your damned mind, Patty.” Sexual frustration is a snarling beast.

She winces, too close to home and _painful_. “Adam, I make a lot of mistakes. You know that.”

“Oh, like this one?” He sounds hilariously offended.

“This isn’t a mistake, just. Poor timing.” Patrice meets his eyes, sharp and clear, almost defying him to correct her. “Like the divorce.”

He crosses his arms, belligerent in a way that mimics her, and all she can really think is _dammit, do_ I _look that impossible when I do it?_. “Oh, that’s just dawning on you?”

“I can’t ask you to let this all be a pass mistake and move on. Columbus was not my city, there was no way to be the Patrice they want . . .”

“I never wanted you to stop being _you_. I just wanted you to go places, to do team stuff with me, to not be offended if the club wanted you to sit next to me at a press event or sell some fucking bracelets at intermission with the other wives.” Adam’s not yelling, but it’s a near thing, old hurts and offenses burning dangerously close to the surface.

“The _other wives_?” Just like that it’s back, sharp and even violent after all of this time. It seems unlikely now that it will ever be different, when she thinks back to the miserable couple seasons she’d spent in Columbus, exiled from her team and her home with an organization neither one of them had lasting affection for. “You say you love me? Then you should know who I am by then! Crisse, we play together for nine seasons! You _know_ how hard I must work to be taken serious as a hockey player. An then you ask me for that, for me to start being a wife instead of a player, an I am not gonna give up being a player. I have to miss games as _coach_ so I can fly in an plan _bake sales_ for them? I’m glad you are captain, I’m _so proud_ of you, but I can’t do what they ask captain’s wives to do. I’m not _like_ the other wives, I thought you like that! That is good for them, it’s fine, but not for me.”

“I never asked you to stop being a coach.” Adam has a look of stunned disbelief that she can’t quite read, that straddles the line between confusion and remorse without committing to either.

“You did! You never said ‘Patrice, stop coaching’ but you did say ‘Patrice, do these things’ without realizing what they cost me, and you do not listen when I tell you! I was proud to be your wife, I would do so many things for you but not that, not when you ask me to choose between that an what I had to fight for! I wouldn’t leave that behind for anything.” Her English is slipping, dripping out of her mind like oil, and she keeps grasping because this is _important_ , dammit, she can’t afford to screw it up.

He keeps _staring_ at her, like there’s something there that he’s trying to suss out, when she’s finally not hiding anything from him. “It wasn’t exactly easy figuring out how to be married to you, either. The legend, the Hall-of-Famer” Adam shrugs, the line of his shoulders tense.

“What could we do?” She grips her mug, thumbing at the rim of the cup. “We are who we are.”

“Maybe you could _say something_? Maybe trust me to _understand_? I mean, I’m just spit balling here, but any one of those things seems like a better option than taking our sons to Quebec and _breaking my fucking heart_.”

That lands like a punch to the chest, causes a sickening curdle in her stomach that leaves her torn between crying and throwing up without the energy to commit to either. It’s one thing to think that yes, probably it hurt him, but that was a distant, almost _safe_ thing until it’s out in the open like that, Adam finally putting words to it and forcing her attention. “You think this doesn't break my heart, too? That I don’t miss you? That I don’t cry at night?” She fists her hands, nails digging into her palm so that she can _focus_. “It is the best choice I have at that time for me, an I took it.”

Adam’s fingers uncurl from around the cup slowly, like the awakening of a flower, and when he finally touches her it’s nothing but gentle. His voice softens. “I missed you. Fuck, I. But mostly I missed _sleeping next to you_ at night. Hell, I missed _changing diapers_ at one point. Patty, I needed you in my life.” When he pulls his hand back it takes a concentrated effort to not huff at him, try to force the contact to linger.

“Then maybe your life should have made spaces for me, instead of making me be the round peg in the square places.” Patrice can’t pretend there’s no culpability in either of their positions, because _conversations_ are a thing, but at some point conversation failed and the distance between Quebec and Columbus, between one life and the other, became more than they could handle. “An I miss you. Miss us.”

His eyes narrow, a look of suspicion that she wants to wipe off his face, however she can. “If this is about you being angry that you didn’t _win_ at something . . .”

“This is not a game. I _did_ lose you.” Patrice gives him a defeated look, rising to her feet. “But I would say it anyway. Because I do love you. I still don’t know what that mean for us, or where it should go with our lives as they are, or. I don’t know. It’s not less true, though.”

Adam’s grip has gotten no less strong over the past few years, still tough as an oak and intimidating when it closes around her wrist, completely circling the delicate joint. He lets go in a second, never one to force her to stay when she didn’t want to, and she appreciates that. “You planned to just leave after dropping all that on me?”

“Plan is . . . not the right word,” she admits slowly, unsure.

“I’m sorry that I’m a demanding ass.” That has her sinking onto the chair, figuring that maybe she ought to stick around for this or . . . something. “I fucked up a lot of things, but I miss you and I’d rather you not run off after dropping this.”

“You were an ass,” she agrees with a touch of skepticism, because she’s always loved him in spite of that. But she shrugs; as long as they’re being honest . . . “I’m also a stubborn dick.” It’s probably one of her least favorite things about herself.

Adam twists their fingers together for a moment. Patrice is the one who hangs on when he goes to pull away. “We are gonna try this again.”

He doesn’t argue. “And the boys?”

_Their_ boys, the boys that are sleeping the sleep of the just, the ones that make her go weak and fierce in a single breath. “We won’t say anything until we are certain. They want so bad, Adam.” She rolls her thumb over the naked skin where his wedding ring would normally be. “We cannot do anything that hurt them. Nothing. If this works, or not . . . we don’t get their hopes up. We don’t say anything until it’s settled.”

Adam starts laughing, the deep rumbles reverberating through her ear and sending pleasant ripples through her chest. “We can still screw this up, can’t we? Because we’re _us_.”

“It’s always a chance.” Patrice is almost frightened of what he’s going to say.

They’re good together, but that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes they’re better apart.

Adam grunts, shifting until he can get an arm around her. “Yeah. But that doesn’t mean we’re not together.” Titling it puts too much on its shoulders, too many expectations. But this can be about them, their family, about trying again and maybe failing but _trying_.

\\\

Patrice shows up in the office indecently early. She’s not ignorant of the fact she’s recycling most of her suit from last night, leaving the jacket and tie back with Adam, dress shirt casually open at the throat to change its line.

It had been an eventful evening and she slept poorly, even tucked up against Adam’s chest for the first time in six years.

He also snored in her ears for the first time in six years, which might account for the mysterious bruise on his side and the dark rings under her eyes.

“You have a disciplinary hearing at eight.”

Patrice swears, trying to hide the startle that ran through her at Joe’s sudden arrival. “Can I cut them a check an call it even? I _know_ what they gonna say.”

Joe’s leaning against the wall, dressed in a polo shirt and with two coffees in hand. They’re from her favorite shop, over on Coors.

She’s _so screwed_.

“It’s a chance to make a statement about you. What do you think?” Joe waggles the coffee cup at her until she finally reaches out to take it. Even with the disaster the day is promising to become it tastes amazing.

“. . . Good point,” she manages, after a few deep drinks.

Joe holds the door open for her and Patrice ducks in without protesting for once, throwing her briefcase onto the desk. It says something that he’s in her office; Joe knows she feels safe here, it’s _her turf_ , which means he’s probably gonna have some less than good things to tell her. He steeples his fingers, a gesture that strikes her as _funny_ for some reason, absolutely political and not Joe at all, and when she stops chuckling he starts talking.

“Boudreau was just the start. We’ve had a couple other coaches deciding the world needs their opinion on last night. Hitchcock, mostly.”

The humor falls away almost immediately; the alert Jonathan had helped her set up pinged her this morning with that particular article. She feels every day of her age. “Dammit, Joe. I’m so _tired_ of this.” After all, saying _your experiences don’t have a place here_ is just a stone’s throw away from _you don’t have a place here_ , a phrase she heard too many times to count when she first broke into the NHL. It’s lost its meaning to her.

At least Hitchcock was more subtle than Don Cherry. Patrice kinda loves the old curmudgeon, actually. After all the veiled insinuations about her reproductive state, it was nice to actually hear someone directly blame her outburst on PMSing. She has a grudging respect for people who put it all out there, even if they’re being dicks about it.

“And?”

“Crisse, Joe. I’m almost 50; what do you think?”

Joe’s eye roll could challenge Jonathan’s for the title of Most Over This Shit. “ _What about Hitchcock?_ ”

She shrugs. “I’m gonna keep an eye out when we play St Louis, but he isn’t involved. His opinion doesn’t matter to me. I hear a lot worse.” And then she stops, and stares, because Joe’s been good about dancing around the subject, but she’s tired of this particular waltz. “We okay?”

He doesn’t ask what she means. “Last night was . . . interesting.” He pauses, but rather than bait him on Patrice waits. Everyone has to grow up sometime. “Did Adam tell you what happened in the owner’s box?”

That has her pausing, glaring at Joe over the top of her cup. She can’t seem to put it down; it’s heavenly. “Should he?”

One eyebrow creeps up, and the smile dancing around the corner of Joe’s mouth has her twitching; it’s either very good or disastrously bad. “Interesting. Well, we saw the whole thing. Plus the play by play Pepsi Vision put on after the teams both cleared out.” That’s nothing new, Patrice knew they’d be watching. She waves him on with the hand that's not still clutching her coffee like a lifeline. “There were some words in the box, which I’m sure doesn’t surprise you. Josh, in particular, wasn’t sure what to make of the whole mess.”

Josh isn’t a hockey man. “What happen?”

Joe smiles, a little sideways, before pulling himself back. “You know how Adam gets when he thinks someone’s taking a cheap shot at his goalie.” Patrice nods, slow and uncertain, but it’s still a trip to hear that Joe apparently knows that Adam still considers Patrice _his_ goalie. “He read us the riot act. Told Josh that he’s seen too much shit like that aimed your way since you started. Made it pretty clear he expected us to have your back no matter how it shakes out in the press. Josh looked a little scared, to tell you the truth.”

Patrice is very rarely at a loss for words; being a smart-ass is part and parcel of who she is, and there are more than enough soundbytes to prove it. But right now she can’t get her tongue working and that’s worrying. “And you?”

Joe looks very mild, which is a part of Joe’s default persona. She knows him better than to take it at face value. “I think you did what you needed to, to make a point. Not the way I would have done it, but you’re a unique case.”

“You mean you expect me to go off my handle sometimes.” Joe’s all about the careful plans, so Patrice doesn’t expect him to actually _get_ the spur of the moment things she needs to do, and she’s braced to get yelled at after the fact.

Joe’s hand pinning her paperwork to the desk forces her to stop shuffling and look at him. “No, I mean I respect you, Patty. I expect that you’ll stand up for yourself when the need arises. And I have your back on this. I said I would back when we hired you.”

He did, she can still remember his face when he said it, but there’s a relief that comes from seeing it actually come true, knowing Joe keeps his word and won’t toss her under the bus. The pressure slides off her shoulders all in one fell swoop, Joe at her back and ready to do what he has to for her so she doesn't have to do it alone. It lights up that flare of loyalty faster than anything. “So you approve?”

“You have the fans and press leaving trails of little cartoon hearts all over Denver.”

She . . . doesn’t get the reference.

Joe sighs. “Point is, you did good. Officially, I’m going with ‘the stanchion wasn’t secured properly’.”

The relief has her slumping. “Thanks, Joe.”

He shrugs, the image of no-big-deal, even though he knows from experience how much it means to her when someone has her back, how stupidly grateful she is that it’s him. “Just. Try to count to ten or something, next time? I’ve got a world of other people’s problems on my desk without you adding to it.”

She toasts him with her coffee. “Anything for you, Joe.”

When the call comes in Patrice answers the phone on speaker, propping her heels on the desk. They can’t see her, but that touch of defiance makes her feel better.

The call is nearly painless. With Joe there she’s appropriately contrite, instead of goading them like she so badly wants to. At no point does she defend her actions, which causes Joe to glance around himself like he’s entering some sort of twilight zone, until Patrice pegs him in the chest with a pen. She’s polite, even when Campbell scolds her like she’s six instead of a _grown fucking adult_ , accepting the fine and hanging up without a single wayward word. It’s an amazing performance.

“Mon Tabernac. He works with Manon, you’d think he’d get his head out of his ass,” she grumbles _after_ she hangs up.

Unfortunately Joe nixes her idea of paying the fine in $1 bills.

“You’d want to deliver it in person, and last thing I need is a photo of you looking like a cartoon bank robber bringing it in,” he points out, leaning against the stall while she pulls on her skates in preparation for practice.

“Can I use quarters an a t-shirt canon?”

Joe could curdle _milk_ when he wants to.

“Oh, fine.” She tightens the laces and tosses Joe a puck. “Make yourself useful. Lace up, I wanna go over taking advantages of scoring chances today.”

Joe blinks at her, rolling the puck in his hands for a few minutes before he sighs, disappears and returns with his skates in hand.

“Let’s see if the Sakic Wrister still sets fear in their hearts.”

\\\

Patrice walks into the dressing room of the Family Sports Center the day after their win against Nashville only to hit a solid wall of sound, her innocent ear drums being assaulted with the loudest, most off key, most _enthusiastic_ birthday jingle she’s ever heard. The team seems to have the same over eager tone deafness that affects five year olds, and Varly is about half a word behind everyone else and making up at least some of the lyrics, but they all manage to end more or less with “to yoooou”.

“Happy birthday, Coach!” Gabe shoves a card into her hand, one of those obnoxiously loud musical ones that begins to play “Another One Bites the Dust” when she opens it.

“Yeah, happy birthday, Patty!”

“What is it, like 50?” EJ asks, darting out of the way before she can retaliate.

“We’re gonna take you out for drinks, right?” Andre slings an arm over her shoulder, steering her deeper into the dressing room.

Patrice was planning an evening at home with her sons, cake for them and 40 year old scotch for her, but from the creepily intense looks on the faces all around the room there’s no bowing out of this without a struggle.

“I got reservations, even the Kid can come –”

_“Hey!” Nate squeaks._

“– and we’ll just do a little toasting.” Gabe’s grinning like he’s not still barred from drinking in the US, too, and the whole room is ranging from disinterested – _Jan, Steve_ – to wide eyed and hopeful – _everyone else_ – and not even Patrice Roy is going to avoid the combined will of a room full of hockey players, not as coach and especially not as the birthday girl.

This is how she ends up in one of her shorter dresses, sitting at the bar of a loosely legal club with her coaching staff and her team, surreptitiously checking her watch.

“Mitchell’s a good kid sitter,” Joe reminds her for the 15th time when he catches her, like he’s offended that she’s so ready to get home already, even though it has nothing to do with Mitchell Sakic’s Foote wrangling skills and everything to do with the promise of Adam’s hand on her leg.

“I _know_ ,” she sighs, also for the 15th time, then jerks her thumb toward the dance floor. “But you can’t say _that_ doesn’t make you feel old.”

_That_ being the better part of a pro hockey team hockeying it up, demolishing anything vaguely food related in their vicinity and dancing terribly with anyone who’ll have them, including each other.

Matt laid sole claim to Pauley’s attention the moment they came into the bar, leaving the rest of the team with Nick as the only other dance partner of the opposite sex, since Patrice made it expressly clear that they were not to even attempt to drag her to the floor unless she’s had at least three shots.

She’s had ten shots sent her way since then.

“I still got it,” she crows, tossing back her 4th, divvying out the remainder to the table. She’s happy with this arrangement, free birthday shots and a table of her good friends, the team out there having fun and bonding.

Not that the image of 5’10” Tyson Barrie swinging around with 6’4” Nick Holden isn’t worth the price of admission, anywhere. They seem to be making the most of it, Gabe and Varly naturally pairing off in a way that makes her wonder if they haven’t danced this tango before.

She would be all over Adam if she could, so it’s not like she has a – heh – foot to stand on.

His thumb keeps rubbing at the vulnerable skin of her inner thigh, and it has her spacing out during Milan’s stories at inappropriate moments.

She’s trying to stay invested. She really is. Patrice hasn’t seen Milan since she was in town in 2010, the 15 year anniversary celebration of their first Cup, and he’s a good guy, she likes being around him and talking to him except _right now_. Right now she could talk to him any old time, whereas Adam has her squirming with a delicious slow burn that has gotten more and more urgent, overriding everything except Adam and want.

He’s got this little grin on his face that tells her he knows exactly what he’s doing to her. It makes her want to squeeze him back, drag him to the bathroom and take care of this now, but they’re not young anymore and the reports in the paper would be worse, and also Joe would probably give her that disappointed look of his. So she crosses her legs and tries to take the edge off a little. She traps Adam’s hand there and doesn’t feel even a little bit guilty as she flexes her thighs to make sure he can’t slip away.

Milan appears to have been saying something funny, even Adam is chuckling, so she throws in a half-hearted giggle just to look engaged.

She can’t help but wonder if part of Adam’s unusual behavior is Alex’s presence at her other elbow. Adam is a confident guy, but there’s something about Alex Tanguay that sets him in unfamiliar shapes, jealous and possessive, as though the younger man is still some sort of potential rival instead of a happily settled part of the past. His nerviness is weirdly endearing, in large part because it’s Adam and she rather likes the idea that he still wants her, despite the years and fights and drama.

“Do you have something to do?” Joe asks, pulling her eyes away from her watch.

Patrice smiles at Adam, sweet and unassuming, and then slowly buries her nails into his knee. “No, Joe. I’m just getting old, and tired.”

They laugh at that, but there’s no denying that Patrice has a handful of years on all of them. Adam is trying to wriggle away from her death grip, but she has no intention of letting him get away that easily.

“Patty!” EJ’s a little on the off side of drunk, because no one on her team would be that loud or that physical with her under normal circumstances. He’s all in her space, pointing at Nate, who looks like he’s torn between apologetic and horrified. “You got enough shots? What’dya say to the Kid getting this dance?”

The music is something soft and sugary sweet, a bubble gum love song, and Nate is shaking his head even as Patrice gets to her feet, smoothing the line of her skirt and rising to her full height. Nate is still flushing, even as Erik starts whistling and chirping, but Patrice ignores him to offer Nate her hand, poised and dignified.

“Well?” she asks, one eyebrow going up, as Nate takes her hand nervously.

“I didn’t want EJ to do that,” Nate mumbles, even as he tries and fails to find a safe spot to put his hands. Finally he settles with holding her like they’re about to waltz, and she looks down at the top of his head and the red tips of his ears. He’s about eye level with her lips, so he must see the smile. He still apologizes. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she laughs, letting him lead. The song is terrible for a waltz, but Nate is surprisingly not terrible at waltzing. “Being a rookie is about being embarrass, Nate. That’s how you know they like you.”

He scowls. “I’d rather they pants me on TV or something.”

“Eh. I’m not so much worse than that. This, they’ll forget. On TV there are recordings.”

Nate looks thoughtful, instead of laughing. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

His seriousness sends a giggle through her, unbidden.

After that it becomes some sort of sign of privilege to get the coach to dance with them, and Patrice finds herself with more dance partners than she knows what to do with. Eventually she has to mooch a hair tie off of McLeod – “You have two little ones, of _course_ you carry hair ties” – to lift the sweat-sticky length off her neck and let her breathe. She spends a fair chunk of change cycling through the team, dancing and talking with them until she finds herself face-to-face with Adam, who takes over Pierre-Alexandre’s place as effortlessly as he used to cut off a pass on the ice, almost undetectable until he’s taken her completely out of the way, one big hand swallowing the curve of her hip.

“Your flirting is distracting me,” she offers conspiratorially, smiling the whole time. “You are a devil.”

Adam sucks in a breath. “Turnabout is fair play.”

“Nothing fair about this,” she murmurs, slipping her hand between them. Adam’s look could best be described as anguish.

“ _Patty_ ,” he hisses, and she tosses her head back to laugh, not missing the way his eyes follow her throat, even as her hand returns to proper places, wrapping around his neck.

“Fair play,” as she rests against him, fitting their bodies together.

“I _really_ don’t think that means what you think it means.”

“I _think_ Mitchell’s watching the kids another couplea hours. An Joe’s wrong, I _also_ think he’s a great Foote sitter.”

It’s almost funny how quickly he jumps on that, leaving Patrice to make her goodbyes while he gets the car.

“So soon?” Gabe says in disappointment, which can only mean he has something up his sleeve.

“It had better be cake,” she chides, “because you can have it at practice tomorrow, before we fly out.”

He looks shifty.

“If not, save it till we are home.” She claps his shoulder, offering her most charming smile as she starts to make her way towards the door. Strippers are entertaining only if they’re around for more than a few minutes.

“Be careful.”

Patrice jumps, smacking her head against the door frame. “ _Crisse_ , I gotta bell you or something.”

Joe looks largely unimpressed with the suggestion, arms crossed and eyebrow cocked like a weapon, leaning against the door frame. “You and Adam. Be careful.”

It’s not strictly a secret, but they’re not exactly ready to start examining it under daylight, either. There’s still a tenuous quality to the reunion, as though both of them are waiting to see if another shoe comes rocking down from the atmosphere. It feels positive, but feeling and knowing are different things, and they have sons they can’t afford to hurt over something ill advised. They have to be certain. “What do you mean?”

“You’re about as subtle as brick, Patrice.”

“Bite me,” comes out like an instinctive sort of protest, no real heat behind it, because denying the obvious has never been her shtick. “But I will.”

She moves to brush past him, but Joe stops her with a shake of his head. “I mean it. Think long and hard; this can’t follow you into the dressing room.”

“Has it _ever_? Please tell me I'm not the only one getting the speech, Adam is in this too.”

Joe’s expression slips from suspicious to something that looks almost beatific, and she curses softly at the accidental tip of her hand.

Joe just squeezes her shoulder affectionately. “I hope it works out. I’ve got money in the pool that you two to make it.”

A part of Patrice wants to correct him, tell him that nothing’s certain, that the moment might still turn on a whim and find them at odds, but she’s too focused on the second half of that sentence to respond. “There’s a pool?” She's not even surprised anymore.

“Odds put it 15:1 that it’s a forever type deal. I’ve got a decent payout if you can keep it together at least through the end of the season. Milan has you eloping with Osgood once we hit Detroit.”

Milan is a bad guy, and she hates being around him. And just for that, “ante up when you have a shot.”

 

\\\

**November**

It’s not really a big decision, in the scheme of things. It’s just one that’s filled with potential _meaning_ in a way that makes Patrice distrust it on principle. So she keeps pushing the decision back, until it’s November and she has to choose, right now.

Adam looks relaxed as hell, sitting with an ankle crossed over his knee, settled on the couch in her office. Callan and Jonathan are doing an impressive imitation of a level 5 hurricane, hyped up on adrenaline and too little sleep, treating the room like a private race track.

“Boys, sit!” She barks it like she would during scrimmage, booking no arguments. They drop like a shot, reacting instinctively to the tone, and by the time Altitude’s cameras come in to capture the back stage action they’re behaving like her children instead of like transmutations of Tasmanian devils.

Joe looks casual and groomed, hands in his pockets and waiting for the call on the ice. Patrice keeps fidgeting, twisting her watch, slipping her heels out of her shoes, tugging at her jacket. She can’t seem to find a place to settle her hands, the second-hand nerves that are racing through her, making her punchy and off tempered.

Joe’ll be out there with Adam when his banner is raised. So will the boys. That’s important. She’s the coach, and because coaching takes precedent she will be on the bench with the team, all of them in their 52 warm up jerseys, Patrice with a little pin on her lapel, right above her heart. She has to be on the bench with her team, and she doesn’t believe a word of that.

Going out there with him will turn into a bigger deal than it needs to be. It’s what she tried so hard to avoid in Columbus. It’s a circus.

It’s a once in a lifetime honor for him.

“This really isn’t an issue for anyone except you.” Joe’s at her elbow, grinning and laughing for the cameras, deceptively light.

“This is why I left Columbus,” she sighs, rotating her watch so the face is resting against her pulse, then twisting it to the back again.

“That’s why you should do this,” he murmurs. “Recover from past mistakes. This is Denver; they respect you as their coach already.”

“I know.”

He touches her wrist, stills the movement. “They’ll have the ice set in five minutes, if you want.”

When Joe and Josh line up to walk onto the ice together with Alan Roach Patrice slips in behind them, passing her suit coat to Tim. She takes Callan and Jonathan’s hands like she needs something to keep her from bolting, or floating away.

Joe doesn’t say anything; he knows her well enough to know that if he makes a comment she’ll scarper for the bench like a spooked deer. He just smiles and nods at her, then directs his gaze ahead.

Patrice takes her place with the boys while the lights are low, when Pepsi Vision is showing a slideshow of Adam’s career – and hers, in a way, their successes and failures hopelessly intertwined – and slips into her seat virtually unnoticed. Jonathan and Callan drop into the chairs next to her, Callan kicking his legs back and forth while Jonathan sits ramrod straight and serious, with his hands in his lap.

She’s grateful that there’s no parading them out; Nicole had a walk nearly as long as Foppa’s when his number was retired, carrying a bouquet roughly the same weight as a medium sized dog in her arms. Joe and Josh didn’t buy her any roses, and Patrice is also grateful for that. She can take her seat, try to ignore the wink Joe throws her way, and squeeze her son’s hands when they both reach for her nearly in unison, their jaws slacked as they tilt their heads back and watch the video.

Their father was a real badass in his time, a _warrior_ , not afraid of anything or anyone, and the reel shows the way he would fire up at any dirty hit, or perceived slight, honor delivered with fists and blood.

The lights, when they come on, are strangely bright. She doesn’t remember them being this overwhelming when she’d watched her own jersey rise into the rafters to join Ray’s. Then again, back then she’d had puffy ankles and sore hips, she’d been more in awe of the life tumbling around under her heart than she had been of the ceremony itself. The significance of it had only come later.

Her place in Avalanche history dawned on her slowly.

Alan takes to the podium with absolute poise. The home crowd cheers Joe when Alan introduces him, their first chance to thank him for this season and they take advantage of it, rippling through the stands with gratitude and enthusiasm. There’s less effusion for Josh; he’s still an unknown quantity, a face the fans have to learn to recognize and appreciate, but he waves to them with the same boyish enthusiasm that he brings to everything.

“And welcome to Adam’s family – His sons, Jonathan and Callan, and Colorado Avalanche Head Coach, Patrice Roy.”

The boys wave, both of them shy in that moment, Callan in particular blushing pink under the unflattering lights in the arena. Patrice raises her hand from her lap, dropping it almost immediately and offering the crowd a sheepish little shrug that looks as unsure as she feels.

She has to appreciate how Alan handled a potentially awkward introduction, even as Pepsi Center begins with a whisper and ends with a bellow, cheering her like they cheered Joe, pouring all their feeling into a roar.

Alan waits patiently for the noise level to die down before continuing. “And now, the man we’re here to honor, Adam Foote. Adam’s career has taken him from player to coach, so it’s only right we follow him from the coach’s room as he makes his way to the ice.”

Pepsi Vision is huge, and it suddenly shifts to Adam, hands in his pockets as Andre and Tim slap him on the back, shake his hand and then take their leave of the coach’s room. Adam moves with _purpose_ , no nerves in his walk as the cameras lead him along until he enters the dressing room, pausing for a second to take it in. He’s watching _everything_ , touching and memorizing, and his fingers drag over the stall that used to be his as he makes his way to the player’s entrance. Adam takes the ice to a song with a driving beat, guitar heavy and pulsing, waving to Pepsi Center and the fans at home, a little embarrassed and a lot proud.

It’s simple – he bends to embrace his sons, kissing them both on the forehead with a tenderness that sets Patrice’s heart sideways, hurts in all the ways that count because these are her sons, and their father, and there’s nothing more beautifully simple than that.

Patrice rises to her feet as he approaches. There’s a second where they both hesitate, but it’s Adam who makes the first move, who folds her into his arms and whispers “thank you,” like a prayer as he palms the back of her head, fingers twining in her hair as they hug.

“Of course,” Patrice whispers back, as though it’s a given. She doesn’t have a way to fix the past, but she can improve on the future. She bumps their foreheads together like after a good game, a goalie to her defenseman, then steps back.

Adam’s hand lingers on her lower back for a moment before he takes his seat next to Jonathan, two sons down from her yet finally close.

Josh presents Jonathan and Callan with commemorative chains, and they stand to accept them, miraculously _not_ immediately ripping the bows off and diving into their gifts because there may or may not have been words had before the ceremony.

Josh and Joe must have had some inkling of her decision before she had really even reached it, because once Josh is done he goes back to his seat, takes a box from Joe’s offering hand and walks back over. Patrice rises to her feet, smoothes her skirt down with faintly shaking hands, then reaches out to accept a Tiffany Blue box, a delicate silver bracelet with the date inscribed on the inside, where the heat of her skin will always keep it warm.

The boys shake Josh’s hand with absolute seriousness but when Josh hands her the box she throws her arms around him in a fit of pique, kissing his cheek.

“I’m gonna keep an eye on you,” she hisses into his ear, which makes Josh chuckle a little. Then she surprises them all by breaking protocol, actually _opening_ the box there on the red carpet and taking the bracelet out, draping it over her fingers. Callan helps her clasp it on.

For a second it almost makes her wrist look delicate.

There are speeches. Joe stands and speaks, and Patrice can’t remember a word of it because she’s tucked up inside her own head, thumb rubbing over the bracelet as it gradually warms to body temperature, melds with her.

When Adam speaks, it’s about history. Growing up, growing in hockey, taking his first steps into the NHL and the people who got him there. He’s particularly grateful to a few – His parents and sisters, Goose and Ray, _Joe_ , everyone who all did what they could to help him succeed.

Adam hesitates, which is the first clue she gets that he’s coming to the end. When he does speak his voice is softer, more hesitant, and naked with emotion in a way he never shows publically. “My two boys, Jonathan and Callan. Y’know, I’m so glad you guys got to see me play in the NHL. The only thing I love more than playing in the NHL is watching you two play, and now coaching you. And I love watching you grow into young men. Your maman and I are just so proud of you both.

“And finally this next guy, my teammate of nine years — nine seasons I played with her — Patrice Roy.” He jerks his thumb to her, smiling a little, and Patrice sits up straighter, schooling her face to neutrality.

“She’s had the most impact on my career. Patrice taught me to be a student of the game. She approached the game with so much passion and intensity and is a fierce competitor. When Patrice came here to Colorado she brought more than MVP goaltending, she added the accountability our young locker room needed.” Adam pauses, hesitates for just a second like he’s catching his breath, and Patrice rolls her eyes skyward to watch Pepsi Vision, which conveniently holds the tears in check.

“It’s been my privilege to play alongside you, and now it’s my privilege to be part of your coaching staff and watch you bring that same passion and intensity to this current Avalanche team. But what I’m most grateful for, Patty, is that you’re a wonderful mother.”

Patrice doesn’t have a microphone to respond so all she can do is look at him.

The rest of the ceremony is a blur of sensation and color. She has a vague recollection of the _size_ of it, the overwhelming spectacle that’s so much _more_ then when her number was retired. She can feel the ghost of Adam’s hand at her lower back as they walked to the banner site; she remembers Velischek, Goose, Wilson, _Ray_ , bearing out his banner, the vivid burgundy of the fabric and the smell of Ray’s old cologne as she kissed his cheek. The rest of it is a blur of adrenaline and pride, not unlike a good game, until the moment she walks into the bench, Varly holding the gate for her as she steps in and takes her place behind the players. Tim hands her her water and she slams back half the bottle in a single swallow before twisting the cap on and setting it into the accustomed place, shrugging her suit coat over her dress like a bullet proof vest and whistling out her second line to take the faceoff.

Patrice didn’t give them any sort of speech about how important winning this one is, because winning _every single one_ is what’s important, but the team knows her history with the Canadiens’ organization and they come out firing on all cylinders, win one for Patty and the new number 52 in the rafters. Adam and the boys have retreated to one of the boxes with Joe and everyone who flew in and Patrice stays on the bench with her team, directing them like she was made to do, and doesn’t spare a thought for anything but the game until after they smoke the Canadiens, three unanswered goals in the third bringing them a comfortable 4-1 win and another reason for visiting teams to fear the Can.

There are moments when her team is more amazing than she would expect. Matt and Pauley take Callan and Jonathan to their place for a sleepover, and everyone else puts some cash in the kitty and sends them to the Chop House.

They shut the place down, Adam holding court surrounded by his closest friends and family. Patrice spends most of the evening with Ray, head on his shoulder with his hand on her bicep, anchoring her. Adam’s sisters are still operating under Family Code of Honor – it’s not like Patrice can blame them – and they get politely chilly if she wanders too close. So it’s just as easy to plop herself down at the bar, reminiscing with whoever stops by and quietly stewing.

Alexandre and Stéphane have their own opinions about Adam, so at least she has that going for her.

“Who next, do you think?”

She looks sideways at Peter, who’s drinking something dark and malty smelling, and rolls her eyes up to the ceiling as she considers. Ray looks politely interested.

“Milan,” she decides finally. “He deserves it.”

They tap their glasses together to seal it, and Patrice quietly makes a note to put a bug in Joe’s ear about it. The conversation rolls to hockey, like it always does, making a brief detour through family and babies, but mostly they talk about administration, about wrangling trades and managing salaries – all those little details that they can finally appreciate and commiserate on. Goose wanders over and settles down next to Ray, settling into a conversation about defense and new systems. It’s wonderful to be around her team again, take the moment to feel young and hopeful, before they settle back into the lives that have drifted all of them so far apart.

Adam comes home with her through some unspoken agreement – Patrice just gets into the cab and he follows her, letting her curl up against his side to combat the cool November evening in the cab that has a busted heater. He brushes her hair off the back of her neck as she fits her key into the lock, presses a kiss to the dip between her shoulder blades.

The feeling of someone else in her house, inhaling and knowing that it’s _Adam_ warming up the air around her settles the warmth of _homecoming_ in her chest. Despite everything, they’re here.

They have sex in the hallway — Adam planting one hand against her belly, holding her steady as he pushes her skirt up, over her hips, nuzzling his nose into the junction between her thighs and eating her out, tongue lightly circling her clit as he works a finger into her.

Patrice gasps, hips rolling restlessly, and after a few minutes of goodnotenough she grips his hair harder than necessary. Adam takes the hint, finally stops teasing around her clit and sucks, adding fingers and stroking, coaxing a sharp, desperate orgasm from her, the muscles of her thighs trembling with the effort of keeping herself upright.

Adam looks up at Patrice along her body, chin wet with her, and it sends a little shiver of aftershock down her spine that he fingers her through.

He presses a kiss to her belly, the skin that’s been through two children and a faulty appendix, the gesture soft and worshipful. Patrice hauls him to his feet, pulls him in and licks into his mouth. Adam tastes like _her_ ; it sends a burning possessiveness through her. It results in Patrice pulling her dress off over her head, kicking her heels down the hall.

The cold hits her like a punch and Adam reaches out, cupping her breasts in his hands as he kisses her, her nipples hard against his palm.

Neither one of them is young anymore, and they don’t have youthful exuberance to blame for sore muscles or injuries, but none of that matters when she holds Adam close, hooking her thigh over his hip, guiding him into her and sighing in relief at the stretch of him inside her.

They’re both tired, the after effects of adrenaline making the sex unhurried and languid. The drywall has a head shaped dent she put into it when Adam coaxed a second orgasm from her, there are finger shaped bruises on Adam’s biceps and he’s still inside her when they collapse onto the wood floor. Patrice settles onto his lap with a hopeful roll of the hips, seating him deeper inside. He just grunts, laughs a little, breathing heavily into her neck as she rides him, Adam’s fingers stroking over the silk of her stockings, easing him to a relaxed orgasm and tripping her over the edge of her third, unhurried and peaceful.

They strip down afterwards, tucking into Patrice’s bed together and immediately seeking each other out across the expanse of the mattress, curling into the same small space.

“What the hell are we doing, Patty?” His eyes keep straying towards her left hand, to the suddenly vulnerable stretch of skin where their engagement ring has made a reappearance, separate from the wedding band. She can’t ignore the way his fingers keep seeking it out, like it’s some sort of talisman for them.

She holds it to the light, trying to get used to the sight of it on her hand. “We are trying.” And maybe the sex muddles things, or maybe it doesn’t make any difference at all.

He’s quiet for several minutes, like he’s fallen asleep, but his fingers keep stroking through her hair, working the knots out with his fingers: it’s lulling her into sleep herself, the end of an exhausting day. When he speaks it’s so quiet she wonders if she somehow imagined it.

“Okay.”

\\\

Patrice plants her hands on her hips, inflating her chest until she looks like Track Suit Superman, and lets loose with an ear-piercing whistle. The players come to a stop in front of her, the slower skaters putting in a final rush of speed before they slide to a stop, kicking up snow.

They’re all panting and she puck handles as she skates down the line.

The season has been unreal – she’s had their backs and they’ve _exploded_ , going places she’d hardly dared imagine they could. There’s a playoff spot on the horizon, the only thing that can lose that spot is _them_ , and there’s a visceral excitement to the team that she can feel. It’s like lower level electricity, making the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

For some of these guys it’s their first shot at playoff experience, and three years is too damn long to go without making an appearance.

“Okay,” she decides, after everyone looks suitably broken in. “Varly, in net. D, I want you paired with Adam for a two-on-one breakaway. Forwards, anyone who scores is gonna be in the shoot-out lineup.”

Pauley actually _raises her hand_. “What about T-Bear?”

The whole team whistles, while Tyson flushes a fetching shade of pink under his visor.

“Tyson can do both, if he wants.” She skates to Adam, who’s leaning on his stick and watching the proceedings. She taps him on the shin with her stick, blade making a clicking sound against the guard.

“Show them how we do this, old man.”

Adam pops his mouth guard out so he can grin at her. “Sure thing, Coach.”

Patrice winks at him then slides the puck over to Matt. “You’re up.”

Matt shifts into position, gives Adam and Nick time to get into position before he takes off towards Varly and glory. She lets the team watch for a moment before she whistles again. Nate _jumps_.

“Pick up your feet, don’t want you getting cold!”

The observing players groan, though they immediately start back to their sprints.

Patrice nods, watching the lines with an impish grin on her face. “Like they say, guys: It’s all good if you are St. Patrice!”

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the outpouring of gratitude segment!  
> Northern Star - for the pitch perfect audio accompaniment for the story, as well as the awesome cover art. Her vision of lady!Patrick really is a wonder to behold. Thanks for your work in making this a more lovely work. And thank you also for all the conversations about Patrick Roy for the big-bang-that-didn't-come-to-be that grew into this instead.  
> Silver Spotted - for going above and beyond the call of duty all day, every day. From making this a million times more coherent than it was, to fixing my typos (I still maintain it was autocorrect's fault), to engaging in hours and hours of conversations about women in the NHL, this AU was made possible through your help and input. This is a much better story thanks to your input and I have a hard time saying thank you enough. It never would have gotten off the ground without you; I owe you one.
> 
> There's a lot more in this AU that hasn't been written up - the [AU timeline](http://elimatethepages.livejournal.com/16060.html) is available for geeks like me.


End file.
